


This is the way the world ends

by paragon



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paragon/pseuds/paragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a series of exchanges with Bones, Jim comes to terms with just about everything. In his defence, those were a few very long days. (Set during STID)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the way the world ends

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Profanity, SPOILERS for Star Trek Into Darkness, canonical and temporary character death, description of injuries, and the need for a bit of suspension of disbelief because admittedly I did stretch the time possibilities a little bit.  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no claim to Star Trek or its characters.
> 
> STID was severely lacking in Jim/Bones interaction, so I sought to remedy that. I hope my first shot at mckirk does not fall flat. It was meant to be 3000 words, and clearly I missed that marker. Title from '[The Hollow Men](http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/)' by T.S. Eliot. Enjoy!

A fresh wave of anger courses through his veins when Spock steps back onto the bridge. Jim grits his teeth, hoping against hope that he is not about to hear another lecture on how wrong it was to save his ungrateful ass. If he hears the words 'Prime Directive' again he thinks he might just kill Spock and get it over with. Killing people in space is easy because the chances of anyone finding a body are minimal, and even then there is rarely anything identifiable left. He can't imagine there would be much opposition. Uhura would, perhaps, have some objections, but even she looks furious at Spock right now. The angriest part of him wants to see how that pans out. If nothing else, it would be something to gossip about.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Spock open his mouth. He steels himself against the upcoming onslaught of logic. As much as he wants to kill or at least punch the man, it is a lot of paperwork to fill out and he doesn't think it is worth the effort to create yet another false story. Spock doesn't speak for a moment, so Jim decides to divert attention from the events of the last half-hour.

"What's the news?" he asks, looking over his shoulder at Spock, who appears affronted at having been cut off before he could say anything.

"To what news are you referring?"

For someone so smart, Spock is thicker than reinforced steel.

"On your health," Jim replies. Spock makes a face, one Jim knows well from having seen it on himself in the reflection of one of Bones' medical gadgets whenever he thinks he is being unnecessarily examined. "You were just beamed out of a volcano. Anything wonky on the inside?"

Spock's eyes narrow, and his eyebrows contort into a clear image of annoyance. Jim has to bite back a laugh. He supposes it's good to know that the ridiculous angle of Spock's eyebrows can somewhat ameliorate any homicidal urges. He thinks he might keep him around if only for the comedic value he provides by not realising he's the butt of essentially every joke.

"Doctor McCoy informed me that I am ailed by nothing more than my nerves. I have nothing…wonky on the inside," he says, the words heavy and awkward on his tongue. Jim laughs, and rejoices when the angle of Spock's eyebrows only becomes more severe. "As I was about to relay upon my arrival on the bridge, Doctor McCoy requests that you report to sickbay immediately."

Jim groans. "Yeah, that's not happening."

He turns away from Spock before he can say something else. He has heard more than enough from him today, and if he has to hear another lecture about _anything_ , let alone the Prime-fucking-Directive, he will open an airlock and ensure that Spock is nearby.

"How long until Earth, Mr Sulu?"

"Forty-five minutes, Captain. Date and time on Earth will be —" he begins, only to be cut off by ship-wide transmission.

"Jim, get your ass down to sickbay before I drag you down myself," Bones growls loud enough to make Jim's ears turn a little pink.

" _Bones_ ," he hisses back. "I'm fine. And don't broadcast to the whole damn ship."

Bones sounds unimpressed, but he usually sounds like that around Jim. "Oh, you're fine? Will you still be fine if I tell all 432 people on this ship about that Troglyte —"

"Fine! Okay, fine, I'll be right down. Kirk out," he says in a rush, cursing himself for ever having the lack of forethought to tell Bones _anything_.

Uhura is giving him a glare that would make any lesser man's balls shrivel up. He has been on the receiving end of it enough times that it just makes him feel vaguely ill. It's a good thing Bones didn't finish that sentence — he is pretty sure it would have created a whole new grade of violent glares. If they could hone the power of that glare, he thinks they could make weapons out of it.

As for the rest of them, Sulu has a smirk on his face, Chekov looks confused, and Spock looks unamused. Then again, saying Spock looks unamused is like saying that space is large or that warp speed is fast.

When he gets down to sickbay, Bones is leaning against a biobed, arms crossed and a glare directed straight at him. It's nothing like Uhura's though, which was something along the lines of _can't you keep it in your pants for one goddamn second_ , whereas this one is _why is my best friend an idiot?_ He grins at him and Bones' scowl deepens. He loves him, he really does.

"For the record, she wasn't just any Troglyte, she was —" Jim starts, a smug grin on his face.

Bones grabs him and shoves him onto the biobed. "The leader of the resistance movement, which is exactly why it was such a bonehead move," he growls, flipping out his tricorder and jabbing it in his face.

"There was a bone involved, I can — _ow!_ " he hisses when Bones jabs him hard in the side of the head with the tricorder, muttering 'oops' unconvincingly. "Primum non nucere. I'm going to report you for harassment."

Bones rolls his eyes and moves the tricorder past his ears. "To your CMO? Or to yourself? Either way I can't imagine much is going to be done about it," he replies mockingly.

Jim opens his mouth to reply, but Bones shoves the goddamn tricorder in his mouth. He goes to bite down, just to spite him, but Bones smacks his other hand down to keep his mouth open. His fingers are pressing Jim's mouth open and holding his jaw in place, a familiar warmth spreading from his fingertips despite Jim's annoyance. He can't do anything but groan as Bones calls him an infant and takes his temperature.

When he finally lets go to transfer the data onto his PADD, Jim whines, "It's right there on the screen!"

"Yeah, but you don't shut up unless something's in your mouth," he shoots back. He has to realise how sexual that sounds, but he doesn't so much as look up at him when Jim waggles his eyebrows, eyes racing between the screen of the PADD and the display. At least his vitals look fine.

"My mouth was busy when I was with the Troglyte woman."

He does it to draw a reaction and it works instantly, Bones groaning audibly and mumbling something about the _goddamn Greeks and their Hippocratic Oath_. He places the tricorder down on his desk and flips through screens of the PADD, eyes scanning the data quickly.

"You could have started an international war," Bones reminds him, as if he hadn't done that a million times since the mission. Jim told him in the first place because he thought he would get at least an admiring pat on the arm, but all it has been is politics _this_ , and Federation _that_.

"A war over my cock. That would have been amazing," Jim marvels. He is great in bed but he thinks that would be a new high. His name would be in all the history books — the only man to ever start a war because of his sexual prowess.

"I would have castrated you myself. Roman Empire style."

Jim isn't sure what that means, but he gets the instant image of rusty axes and no anaesthetic. An involuntary shudder runs through his body and his hands drop instinctively into his lap. Bones' eyes dart up from the PADD to follow his hands, smirking a little when they land in a protective position. He drops his hands from his lap and grins at Bones instead.

"Why Bones, if you want to take my pants off, all you have to do is ask," he says, grinning salaciously.

Bones apparently doesn't think he should dignify that with a response, because he just tosses Jim one of his patented scathing looks before turning his attention back to the data analysis. PADDs don't take that long to process anything, so either Bones sees something very wrong, or he is stalling to keep him down here, which is really very sweet. They should have pretty much the same check-up results, considering they both spent a good chunk of time running from Nibirans.

"Be honest, though — you're just pissy about that whole thing because I didn't consult you first. Breaking protocol, doesn't it grate on your nerves?" he taunts, just to keep up the steady flow of conversation, even if it does seem to be one-sided.

"I'm not Spock," he replies sharply, eyes still on the PADD. He pulls up a three-dimensional image of Jim's body.

"Thank god for that," Jim mumbles. He shakes his head. He doesn't want to talk about Spock. He left the bridge to get away from him, not to be confronted with further conversation about him.

Well, that's not exactly true, because he just really, really didn't want the whole crew knowing he risked sparking a civil war because his dick took sides in the conflict. Getting rid of Spock was just a very fortunate side-effect.

"Who made that rule up, anyway? Can you imagine Sulu coming up to us and asking our permission to sleep with some hot Andorian? Next time I plan to sleep with an alien, I won't break regulation, I promise," Jim assures, placing his hand over his heart just as Bones takes a closer look at the data from his torso.

Bones looks up at him. He seems strangely frustrated, like he can't quite figure something out. It deepens the lines in his forehead and he ignores the beeping sound his PADD makes that probably indicates it found an anomaly.

"I don't care about regulation, I care about —" he starts, then stops to clear his throat. He scans the PADD and nods to himself, before putting it down and crossing the room.

As Bones gets close, his hands start to raise, focus torn from the conversation. Jim grabs his wrists, cutting him off mid-thought and smirking. Bones scowls at him, looking impatient. There is really no point in him pretending that he didn't start a sentence that Jim is pretty certain would have ended in _you_. Bones is getting sentimental in his old age. Although, if Jim were being honest, he would kill to hear the rest of that sentence slip from Bones' lips.

"You care about what?" he asks with a smirk.

Bones doesn't bite, twisting his wrists out of Jim's grip and shaking his head. "I care about avoiding intra-Federation war. Shirt off."

"Aren't you going to buy me dinner first? If it's nice I might put out on — ow!" he yelps as Bones jabs at his side. "Jesus, fine."

He pulls his shirt over his head and realises that his body is aching. Obviously a part of it is from Bones jabbing at the goddamn bruise on the side of his torso, but basically everything hurts and he can feel a few bones popping when he shifts to get the shirt over his head.

Bones eyes immediately stare down at his chest and narrow with focus. He could do this without his hands. Most doctors just use the tricorder, especially for something as trivial as checking bruises, but Bones has always maintained that until a machine can feel as any human does, the hands-on method is always the best. Bones even, in the days back in the Academy, checked his heart rate by hand when his tricorder was across the room. It always skewed the reading, having Bones pressed so close against him. It made him tense for some reason.

"What got you there?" he asks quietly, effortlessly shifting back to a more professional demeanour.

He slips his fingers over the edge of a brilliantly coloured bruise. Jim's heart rate picks up, the biobed display makes note of that, but they both attribute it to the slight pain. He isn't sure why he didn't notice it when changing out of his wetsuit, but it is one of the brightest purples he has ever seen. Bones, seeing the severity, doesn't prod at it again. He retrieves the tricorder to check for any further internal damage, but doesn't seem to find anything. He drags his fingertips over the tender skin again.

"The dull end of a spear, maybe? It's the right shape," Bones suggests quietly, more to himself than to Jim, but he still nods in agreement.

Bones looks concerned, but Jim shrugs. "They're fine, Bones. They're just bruises. I'll live."

"I have been a doctor for a while now; I know what a bruise looks like," he replies dryly, still not moving his hands from Jim's body.

He doesn't particularly mind. Despite working with his hands, Bones' fingers are soft and gentle as they drag over his skin. Even when they press down they are steady and never prod too hard at the tender skin. All the doctors Jim visited in his youth pressed too hard, always under the guise of finding the root of the problem. Bones' fingers never hurt unless he wants them to. He could be a little gentler with the hypos, but like this he's always careful.

At first, Jim believed that Bones knew how to press because he knew Jim's body — from those long nights leaning against each other at the bar, from crashing together in one of their beds every other night, and from all the times Jim returned to the Academy with ripped knuckles and a bloody lip. But he was always like that, from the moment Jim first needed patching up. He is just so good at what he does.

He watches Bones' hands move over his skin for a moment. He looks focussed, like his vision has narrowed in only on this skin beneath his fingers. When he breaks that focus, he blinks a few times and meets Jim's eyes. For a moment, Jim cannot think. It is the most relaxing moment he has had in the last few days, and yet also the tensest. It feels like he is supposed to say or do something, but Bones is too close to him right now for him to think of what exactly that is.

Then, Bones shakes his head. "It's nasty-looking, but it's just a bruise. I can regen it to speed up the healing process," he says, his voice clinical, almost absent.

As his tone changes, so too does the atmosphere in sickbay. It is like Jim is suddenly reminded that there are other doctors piddling around in some corner likely playing cards or telling stories to pass the time before returning to Earth. One of them could have examined Spock or him to get the process done with, but knowing Bones he wanted to give them the time off. Jim straightens up and plasters on a smile.

"Always looking out for me, aren't you, Bones?" he laughs. "It's a good thing too. Guess what I have lined up for this weekend?"

Bones digs for a dermal regenerator and tosses him another scathing look, but the corners of his lips quirk upwards, his face rebelling against his mind as he fights the urge to laugh. It makes Jim smile too, tilting his head and stretching out his body to give Bones better access to the large bruise along his right side.

"Let me guess, a girl," he deadpans, pressing his fingers softly across the mottled and bruised skin.

"Not quite."

"Two girls, then," he replies as he follows the path of his fingers with the regenerator.

Jim groans. "Dammit."

Bones smirks at him. "You're getting predictable. And let me guess, they're Caitian."

Jim starts, and it really is entirely his fault for jerking so quickly that Bones' fingers dig into the bruise. He hisses at the pain and Bones doesn't apologise, instead deflecting the blame onto him. Jim takes back everything he said about Bones being a good doctor because he is very clearly just in this to witness Jim's pain. And to think he chose this idiot as his CMO.

"There is no way you could have guessed _that_ ," Jim grits through his teeth as Bones finishes the regen. He turns away from Jim to tuck it away, taking just a little too long to do so.

"I know you better than you think. You're free to go, have a good weekend," he says, not looking back up. Jim tugs his shirt on, but doesn't tear his eyes from Bones' back.

"What, are you not going to see me when we disembark?" he asks, confused. They always go for drinks rights after they get back, usually to write their reports together, and then crash on their couch drunk off their asses. Jim isn't sure how to lie his way around this mission, and he was hoping that Bones could lend some valuable ideas as to how to write anything other than that the surveil was 'uneventful'.

Bones looks over his shoulder, but shakes his head. "I figure you want to get home to your Caitians as soon as possible, and I have to find somewhere quiet to file a ridiculous number of medical reports for you ingrates. Now leave, you have a ship to captain, " Bones says, his tone light in a way that almost sounds forced.

Jim laughs, though. He thinks that's what Bones wants to hear anyway because the tension leaks out of his shoulders and Jim can tell that he's smiling. His posture always shifts when he smiles around Jim.

"Yes sir," he replies with a grin. He stretches as he hops off the examination table.

He's almost out of sickbay when he pops his head back around the corner. Bones is looking quietly frustrated, wringing his hands and glancing down at the PADD, no longer focussed on Jim but on the report he likely has to rewrite to exclude the events of the day. He's fortunate that he only has to write on what the post-excursion check-ups revealed. It is easy to write down 'unexplained bruising' and have it be truthful.

"You okay, Bones?" he asks, and Bones jumps, not realising he was still there. The frustration doesn't leave his face as he turns towards him.

"I'm fine, Captain," he replies, his voice sharp and clinical again. Jim doesn't push, instead just nodding and stepping out of sickbay.

It strikes him that this is the first time since he got the position that Bones has called him 'Captain'. He wonder if the word feels as foreign on Bones' tongue as it does to his ears.

**-»«-**

He always starts with beer. The age-old adage condemning the intake of beer before liquor has long been proven false, and even if it were not, Jim would likely continue to drink beer before touching whiskey on nights like these. There are nights for shots of whiskey that burn his throat on the way down and get him drunk faster than anything else. Tennessee whiskey, always. He and Bones haven't had anything different since joining Starfleet. Bones got the good stuff whenever he got the chance, and he always knew where to look. He tried to save it up, but the two of them usually tore through the supply in less than a month. Jim is surprised it still stings his throat, and he hopes he will never lose that beautiful burn. Good whiskey always burns.

But this is not one of those nights. This is a night where he wants to get drunk slowly, wants to drag it out. He wants to nurse his sorrows in his beer until the ache in his chest becomes too much for him to handle without something harder. He wants the light buzz from the beer to build and build until it hurts more than it heals, then he wants to soothe it all with whiskey when he can't stand the pain. He is to report back to the Academy, he knows his orders, but there was no specific details of when or where, so he feels content in drinking himself into oblivion as many times as he can before Pike hauls his ass back to the Academy.

He doesn't want to go back. He doesn't want to go back to a place where much of what he learned was already drilled into his brain, where his aptitude test scores only made his teachers and peers alike resent him. He doesn't want to be stuck in that fucking place without Uhura to humble him and Bones to heal him. He doesn't want to be…

He swallows half his beer in one long drink and pushes that aside. He doesn't have much of a choice. Shy of some sort of disaster, he doubts he will be reinstated. It isn't something he wants to accept, but unless Pike fights hard, he will fall from Captain to Cadet in the span of a day. He finishes the rest of the beer, hoping to drown the thought before its the only one on his mind.

A distraction. He needs a distraction. He pays for another beer and peers down the bar, examining his options. There is a small smattering of people sitting alone, but the tall, older, brunet man catches his attention the most. His face is traced with lines that seem to have come from laughter — something so refreshing to see that Jim wonders if he could take him home based off of those lines alone.

His idea is cut short when someone claims the seat next to him. He feels annoyance building in his stomach at first because there are so many other empty seats and he is pretty sure he looks about as 'get the fuck away from me' as is physically possible. He doesn't want to start anything, not really, but he still turns to scowl at his unwelcome neighbour.

He is eyes meet a familiar lined face, instead of the stranger he ancitipated. These lines are different, though. The forehead seems almost permanently creased, the lines by the eyes ones of fatigue, not laughter (although Jim remembers when they were representative of both). His eyes trace the ghost of his dimple that Jim thinks he can only see because he knows it is there, because he is one of the few still around that has seen a full smile on his face. He is barely thirty and already the lines left by frustration, loss, and heartache seem permanently etched into his face. He might be crazy, but he would take those lines over ones etched by happiness any day.

He knows he looks surprised — he can feel his features contorting in response to the realisation that Bones is sitting next to him, prying the beer bottle out of his condensation-slick hands. He throws him a look before taking a long draw from _Jim's_ beer. He snatches it back and glares. Cheap bastard.

Bones shrugs at him but doesn't look away. He is pinning him with his gaze, and Jim Kirk has always hated feeling trapped. If his gaze could speak it would just be Bones saying _kid_ in that stern voice. Jim has heard it enough times to know Bones' tone is nothing shy of fond, but that doesn't make him feel any less trapped.

This is the first time Jim has seen him since their strange exchange in sickbay. Maybe it wasn't strange, though, because Bones doesn't seem to have it weighing on his mind in the slightest. Maybe he really was perfectly fine and Jim was seeing things that were not there. He shrugs it off and tries to focus on the moment.

"We came here once during our finals break during first year, remember?" Bones asks. He snags the bottle back and takes a slow drink. Jim watches his throat work, his Adam's apple bobbing over the unfamiliar liquid. Bones doesn't drink beer anymore, only whiskey.

He doesn't know where this is going, but it is a distraction from everything else, and he is grateful for that.

"Vaguely. I remember us working on…Christ, what was it? We did a shot every time we covered a chapter," Jim recalls. The softest smile quirks Bones' lips, and his dimple is just barely visible.

"Planets of the Federation Pre-2161," Bones says. He shakes his head and squints, brow furrowing. Jim laughs softly, thinking about what it would be like to press the lines away, only to watch them return deeper when Bones glared at him. "No, it was another required course. I hated those. I'm a doctor, dammit. I don't need all of that diplomatic horseshit."

Jim laughs again and Bones' face softens. Then, his eyes widen. "Customs and Belief Systems of Non-Federation Planets!" he exclaims.

It comes rushing back to Jim, and he huffs out another laugh. "You were shit in that class."

Bones glares. "I got the highest mark on the final!"

"Second highest," Jim reminds him, "and only because you came crawling to me for help."

For that comment, Bones polishes off his beer for him. Jim rolls his eyes and waves for another two, but Bones declines. He rolls his eyes again because they both know that he will just steal sips from Jim's again.

"We were so drunk by the end of the night we crashed on our apartment floor pretty much every day before finals," Bones recalls.

His lips are quirked again and he looks happy. Not normal-person-happy, but Bones-happy. He misses seeing that. It has been a while, but then again, they haven't had much chance to be happy. He gets to see grumpy Bones and grumpier Bones on a regular basis, but that smile — that _real_ smile — hasn't graced his lined face in a few weeks. Jim doesn't miss the Academy in the slightest, but he sure as hell misses the days when Bones smiled more. He thinks that, if he really is kicked back to the Academy, he will spend more time trying to make Bones laugh even if they are lightyears apart.

"Yeah, but like I said, you were still second highest in the class. I think I make a damn good teacher," Jim says, smirking around the neck of the bottle as he takes a long drink. Bones rolls his eyes.

They settle into a comfortable silence. Rather, a silence that should be comfortable, that normally would be. Maybe it is completely fine for Bones, but Jim feels a line of tension rocketing through his spine as he remembers all over again why he is sitting in a bar and not on his beautiful starship.

He is angry. He's angry at himself, at Spock, at Pike, at every person in power in Starfleet. He's angry because he is stupid and everyone else is too, and it makes trying to do the right thing impossibly difficult.

Bones is looking at him again, but this time he's giving him room. He doesn't feel trapped, but he does feel lost and angry, a preemptive loneliness aching in the pit of his stomach. He should have gone straight for the whiskey. Instead, the bitterness is stockpiling faster than he can clamp down on it. Bones knows he is about to explode, and he grabs his elbow quickly, dull nails right against the tendons. It _hurts_ , but it calms him down. He slumps a little and gazes down into the bottle. He is still angry, but he has it under control. He's not going to pick a fight.

"When did letting an entire species get exterminated or letting your first officer die become the ethical high ground anyway? I wish I had been forwarded that memo so I could have torn it up myself," he says, his voice weighted with bitterness.

"You lied in your report, Jim."

"I know! I know. God. I just…"

That's not what he wants to hear. He wants to hear that he's right, that Starfleet as a whole is being ridiculous about the matter, that he was acting in the best interests of the inhabitants of the planet. They promote diplomacy with different species and planets, but how can they form a diplomatic relationship if a species is wiped from the universe? He wants to hear that Starfleet's non-intervention would have been nothing shy of murder.

"You didn't think Spock would do that to you," Bones says, finishing his thought for him.

"Yeah. I should have known better, you warned me and everything," he says, and he can taste the bitterness in his mouth again. He takes a long swallow of beer to drown it, but it just comes back in waves.

Right here what he wants to hear is that Bones was simply being bitter about the situation, that he had just been worried. He wants to hear that of course Spock would have saved him. He wants to be reassured and feel some sort of temporary satisfaction in believing that he was _right_.

But Bones has never told him what he wants to hear.

"He may be half-human, but he didn't so much as act in self-preservation in that volcano. I wouldn't have trusted him to save you," he says. Jim snorts.

"What would you have done?" he asks, not expecting an answer. He merely wants to stump Bones, wants him to not have all the answers for once.

Bones didn't even flinch. "I don't know," he admits. "I probably would have knocked him out, for starters. You're not dying unless I kill you."

Jim doesn't expect it to happen, but he feels the anger and bitterness slip away, tugging at the corners of his lips as they go. He shuffles over in his chair to press their arms together from the shoulders to the elbows, just to be closer together, just to feel the heat of his skin through the layers.

"Thanks, Bones," he says. He doesn't mean his voice to be soft and sincere. He was actually aiming to play it off, make them both more comfortable, but instead he got serious. He supposes that is it more honest this way.

"Dying at the bottom of a volcano? You'd have looked pathetic, I wouldn't have subjected you to that," he says, grabbing for the bottle and emptying it, still looking embarrassed by how sincere Jim's response was. Jim rolls his eyes and starts in on another bottle.

"You would have missed me," Jim shoots back, but again he misses his target tone. He looks away and takes a drink, knowing he's drinking it too fast.

Bones just presses their forearms together as they rest on the sleek bar top. "I'm glad I don't have to, kid," he says pointedly, before breaking his gaze and snagging the bottle again.

Jim smiles softly until he can't smile anymore, until reality creeps back in and slips its hands around his throat. He grabs the bottle right from Bones' mouth, ignoring the grumbling about him almost chipping a tooth. He tries to swallow past the suffocating hands, only managing to force down a small mouthful.

Bones is staring at him, and if Jim had not been staring back he could have sworn he had said _kid_ again. His eyes flickered concernedly across Jim's face, but he kept his lips pressed together, asking a question that Jim didn't know how to answer. _Are you going to be all right?_

He isn't. He is going to drink and get in stupid fights and cause as much mayhem in the Academy as he did before he graduated. Except this time, he won't have Bones there to drag his sorry ass back to the apartment or to patch him up when his smile is bloody and his eyes sparkling from the rush of a fight. This time he won't be fighting to work off stress, but to feed his anger, disappointment, and the building sense of self-hatred that he isn't prepared to face.

He sighs. "I've got nothing left, Bones."

"Don't be stupid," is the immediate response. He smiles. It's not funny, but he expected those three words. He gets them an awful lot from Bones. He's almost getting predictable.

"I'm not, though. The Enterprise is back in 'capable' hands, all thanks to Spock. No ship, no crew, and I'm back in the Academy with a bunch of brown-nosed little fuckers who probably couldn't fly a ship if autopilot was on," he growls, taking an aggressive drink from his bottle as he finishes his sentence. The sharp pain as the glass hits his teeth too hard wasn't intentional, but the pain adds to the moment.

"I didn't have much to start with, but I think this is a new low," he admits, his eyes drifting back to Bones'.

He wants to say something about having the world in his fingers and letting it slip, but his voice catches in his throat at the look on Bones' face. He doesn't think the man realises what he looks like, but for a few long seconds, Jim can see the naked concern on his face, pressing the deep lines in his forehead only deeper. He looks as sad, worried and as lost as Jim feels.

He grabs the beer bottle back from Jim and takes a long drink before he says anything. In the silence Jim tries to focus on the sense of warmth and belonging where their arms are pressed together. The bar cultivates loneliness, but Bones walked in and turned that soil over again, if only temporarily.

"You don't have nothing left, Jim," he says finally, his voice scratchy and low as he takes another, smaller drink.

Jim smiles, and this time it feels real. It feels like one of his usual smiles, pressing his lips apart like an almost unstoppable force determined to conquer his face. He feels the corners of his eyes wrinkling a little and his teeth even flash despite him trying to press back the smile. Bones' seriousness dissipates almost entirely and he rolls his eyes at Jim's ridiculously wide grin.

Like he said, Bones never quite tells him what he wants to hear, but he always tells him what he needs to hear. And right here, right now, feeling as lonely as he did four years ago in that Iowa bar, he needed to hear that he isn't alone.

He has to play it off, though. It doesn't matter anyway — Bones knows. He always knows.

"I got you?" he asks, his smile still widening on his face.

"Of course you do," Bones replies gruffly, like he doesn't particularly want to repeat himself.

Jim smiles. "All I got left is my Bones."

Bones shakes his head, but Jim can see the smile creeping past his lips. He hides it with another drink, leaving only a couple mouthfuls in the bottom of the bottle. Jesus. He's buying next time. Jim had intended to go out and get a few beers, but he thinks he has had maybe two, two and a half thanks to Bones.

He sets the bottle down closer to Jim than to himself, clearly leaving the last bit for him. Jim almost calls him considerate, except it _is_ his beer anyway. He rolls his eyes and slips his fingers around the neck of the bottle, gripping it loosely just in case Bones tries to take it back. Bones is not staring at the bottle, though. His eyes are flitting between their arms on the bar and Jim's face.

"So, I'm yours now, am I?" Bones asks, the hint of laughter in his voice. It's clearly meant to be teasing.

"You've always been mine."

When he thinks about it later, he knows he will blame the sordid combination of alcohol, heat, and emotional instability for saying what he does. In the meantime, however, he has to hopelessly try to stop the sentence leaving his mouth with a tone that doesn't seem right, that seems to serious for the situation. He doesn't know why he said it like that.

Bones' reaction is the most nerve-wracking part of the whole thing. They have never had to be weird around each other. There were never any odd hesitations or awkward pauses filled with a suffocating silence. Even the rarest occasion when one or the other came home to a guest 'sleeping over', the weirdest was brief and immediately remedied by a roll of the eyes and a laugh about putting a damn tie on the door, for Christ's sake.

He could laugh it off, but he doesn't see the point. It's true. Bones has always been his, from the moment he sat next to him and lectured him on all possible ways they could die before they reached the Academy. It is just…it's not something to be said. It is supposed to be known and it shouldn't need words, and yet Bones looks genuinely shocked. He opens his mouth after a few long, torturous moments, and Jim is certain he is about to get jokingly called possessive, or have Bones wish he had someone less insane as a best friend.

A familiar sound rings through the bar and their eyes dart down towards Bones' pocket at the same time. Bones groans and waves it off, but Jim shakes his head and turns back to his beer. Bones stares at him for several long seconds, torn between answering his comm and dealing with Jim.

"You're a doctor, Bones. What if someone's hurt? Look at it," Jim orders sternly.

The tension snaps in the bar and Bones nods distractedly, tugging the comm out of his pocket and reading the message. Jim takes a drink from the beer to calm himself down a little and watches Bones read. His features quickly change from annoyance into worry, and he squints as he rereads the message. His eyes widen.

"Shit," he whispers, low and almost _scared_.

"What happened?"

Bones moves his other arm from where it is still pressed against Jim's and gets off the barstool quickly, straightening himself out and tucking the comm away. He waves for a glass of water and downs almost all if it in one gulp. He shakes his head.

"No idea, but it's from the Starfleet hospital in London. There are dozens of doctors on shift and yet it was a mass-comm. Says to transport from the nearest base straight to the hospital," Bones replies, all thoughts of Jim's declaration appearing to have vanished. Jim is grateful for that.

"That doesn't sound good."

"It's not. Docs returning from space are supposed to be off-duty for a week. It's been, what, two days? And we're thousands of miles from London." He checks the comm again, as if expecting another message with more information.

"Wouldn't they have notified all of Starfleet if it was that serious?" Jim asks, straightening up in his chair.

Bones shakes his head, glancing towards the door. "Not if it was sensitive. They have to get medical personnel in there first."

Jim pats his arm, hand heavy as it rests on his shoulder. "Better get going then. Keep me updated, yeah?"

Bones nods, but he can't manage much more than a grimace that brings out the lines of frustration in his forehead. He promises he will do what he can and implies that he will come to see Jim later, but it won't really matter. By then, Jim plans to be passed out in someone's bed.

Jim watches him leave over his shoulder, eyes following Bones as he almost sprints of the bar. He watches Bones until the door closes behind him, and even then his eyes linger on the door for a few moments after. It brings a brief smile to his lips before that too falls away as a sense of impending doom builds. He turns back to his beer and drains it in one drink.

He thinks about what Bones said. He thinks about what _he_ said. He doesn't know why he said it, and he definitely doesn't know why he said it like _that_ , like he was so certain Bones had always been and would always be his. His tone was smooth and clear, but there was no smile in his voice. He sounded almost clinical, like he was filing a report. Although if he filed reports with that amount of honesty he wouldn't be sitting where he is right now.

_You've always been mine._

He knows he should have meant it a certain way, but the words didn't feel quite as offhand as he intended. Maybe if he had tacked on an _idiot_ it would have come off that way. Less honest, but safer. When he tries to think about what he really meant, his head spins like he has had twice as much to drink.

"Whiskey on the rocks, whatever you got."

He decides that it is probably better not to dwell on it as he watches the ice cube spin in the glass.

**-»«-**

Jim usually sits right next to Bones on a shuttle, so it is weird to have him one row behind, still tinkering with his PADD to pull up the limited data he was able to scan from Jim while he dodged the tricorder. For a moment, concern flashes through Jim at the thought of Bones having to sit there, alone and anxious, as the shuttlecraft lifts off. He never got over his aviophobia. He is fine on the Enterprise most of the time, but the shuttlecraft are considerably less advanced and it sets him on edge. Jim pushes his concern aside to flash his newest science officer a wide smile.

"So, Lieutenant Wallace, have you ever been near the neutral zone before?" Jim drawls, his voice heavy with flirtation. If Spock was the sort to do such a thing, Jim could have sworn he saw him roll his eyes.

Lieutenant Wallace smiles back, but it looks more diplomatic than anything. "I have. Although I specialised in advanced weaponry, I always did have a fondness for the study of foreign relations," she says, her voice crisp and sharp.

She is exactly the sort of person Jim usually likes, he can tell this already. She is bright and spirited. Space could suck that spirit out of her, but Jim gets the feeling that it will only serve to inspire her more. She is beautiful, that goes without saying, but she is alluring even in the way she carries herself. She seems naturally guarded, like she has been training for an assignment like this since she first got into Starfleet.

"Now tell me, how did someone as young as you get their doctorate so — _Christ,_ " Jim hisses as he is jerked violently out of his seat by a steady hand on his wrist.

He turns to glower, snap at whoever thought that was a good idea, to find Bones glowering just as viciously at him. The resolve he would have maintained had the look been directed by anyone else crumbles at the concern and fear on Bones' face. He knows Bones. He knows that he was showing Jim the concern and the fear for both of their sakes. He would never dare to be as vulnerable around anyone else.

Jim turns back to his newest science officer with a smile. "It was nice meeting you, Lieutenant Wallace," he says quickly, receiving a nod and a _Captain_ in return.

He turns back to Bones and lets himself get dragged back to the row of seats he had been sitting in. Bones pushes him down into one of the seats before sitting down himself, looking considerably less nauseous now that he isn't trying to stand up on a moving shuttlecraft. He immediately snaps out his tricorder again, still looking annoyed at Jim for whatever grave crime he has committed this time.

It's like he can sense Jim's scepticism, because he instantly snaps, "You _promised_ me you'd come in for your eval this morning."

His voice comes out harsher than either of them expected, and both of them recoil. He can even see Spock's head turn minutely at the sound of confrontation. Jim isn't sure why he bothers; his ears are large enough that he could probably be in the back of the shuttlecraft and still hear their conversation with perfect clarity.

Jim is immediately defensive. He forgot, plain and simple, but the part of him hurting the most wants to make a big deal out of it. He wants to ask sharply whether Bones actually gives a fuck that he didn't show up or if he's just pissy because Jim broke his promise. He wants to yell that he's fine and that Bones needs to give him room to breathe for once in his goddamn life. He wants to wrestle out of his grip and lock himself in the shuttlecraft bathroom until they reach the Enterprise.

"Do you really give a —" he starts angrily, but stops himself before he can get the question out.

He takes a deep breath and thinks about it for a moment instead. Of course Bones cares that he missed his eval. Bones has always cared about him more than he cares about technicalities. If Jim even suggested otherwise, it would be nothing shy of _hurtful_. Bones would never treat it as such, of course, but they have been through enough together that Jim knows what it would do to him.

As for breathing, Jim has always breathed better with Bones around. That is just how it is. He was nervous going into Starfleet. Actually, he would go so far as to call himself terrified. The second he met Bones, his heart shot from the pit of his stomach up to his throat, before settling where it belonged as the Tennessee bourbon drowned his nerves.

Bones is already giving him a murderous look of _do you really want to finish that fuckin' question?_ Jim can imagine his accent slipping in with anger. He doesn't want to finish the question. He wishes he hadn't even started it, because they both know what he was going to say and they both know what the answer is. Jim sighs and ducks his head, relaxing with a little wave telling Bones to do his worst.

"I honestly forgot. Sorry," he whispers. Bones nods immediately, posture shifting minutely to mirror Jim's as he relaxes as well.

"You're an idiot," he shoots back immediately, but there is the hint of affection in his voice as the words come out.

"You love it," Jim says with a grin as Bones moves the tricorder over his torso.

Bones doesn't respond, although the slight tilt of his lips as he stares at the readings is more than enough of an answer. Jim smirks and glances towards Spock, who is still watching them in what he must think is a subtle manner. He looks away after an extremely slow blink. Jim wonders if he is trying to get at something, but figures that it's just Spock being…well, Spock. It doesn't matter either way, because he's a little distracted by Bones lifting his damn shirts.

"Bruise healed well," he mumbles absently, setting the tricorder down on his lap for a moment. His fingers drift over the flawless skin once marred by one of the ugliest bruises Jim had ever seen, and he spent a lot of his life being bruised and battered.

He bites the inside of his cheek, and keeps his eyes pinned to Bones' face. The man's eyes are fixated on the healed skin, fingers gentle as they brush over skin that, while superficially healed, is still a little tender. The focus in his eyes for something as simple as examining a bruise has always caught Jim off-guard, no matter how many times he has paid witness to that intensity.

"Is it still hurting?" he asks quietly, pressing the edges of where the bruise was just hard enough to make Jim feel a gasp rising in his throat.

"A bit," he croaks out, before clearing his throat. Bones nods and digs for the regen again, ignoring Jim's protests as per usual.

"I'm going to do the new ones too, okay?" he asks quietly, although it sounds less like a question and more like a promise. Jim glances down at his chest to see a smattering of smaller bruises, some just as deep in colour, trailing across his chest from the firefight. He nods belatedly as Bones begins the regen.

He can feel the skin healing. It is the most curious sensation, regeneration. It feels like his body is being seamlessly stitched back together, and yet the area never feels normal for a while. He thinks it is mostly psychosomatic — a side-effect of knowing that the the healing process was expedited. The regen speeds up natural processes, so it is hardly artificial, but he never quite feels right.

Bones' hand is on his chest to hold him still. It is unnecessary, but something about those fingers on his skin calms him down. He has been a constant strum of nervous energy since the bar. It feels like days ago when in reality it has only been twelve hours. Bones grounds him. He thinks it is funny, considering they are currently in a shuttlecraft that has just reached the edges of Earth's atmosphere, that this is the first time in twelve hours he has felt like he is on solid ground.

Bones' fingers stay there longer than has to be strictly necessary, but Jim doesn't mind. He can feel warmth where their skin is touching. It feels like there is heat seeping from his fingertips to permeate Jim's skin, warming even the parts of him that feel the most frigid at the moment. There is a slight bit of turbulence as they exit the very limits of Earth, but that makes Bones freeze up, not him. The way Bones' fingers slip higher up his chest, grazing dangerously close to his nipple, affects him considerably more.

"You okay?" Bones asks, his voice soft and concerned once he seems convinced that they are not going to crash and fall to the earth. "Your heart rate just jumped. You're usually fine with take-offs."

He nods quickly, coming up with an excuse. "I'm good. Long couple days, you know?" he says, a laugh in his voice that he can barely force when all he can think about is how Bones' middle finger would brush directly over his nipple if he slipped just a few centimetres higher.

Bones' eyebrows furrow as he tucks away the regen, tapping the healed area a few times. He seems satisfied with the internal regeneration. He tugs Jim's shirts back down for him and looks him right in the eyes, wordlessly pulling the tricorder out again to finish the scans. They don't have much time, maybe three minutes, before Jim has to get back into his seat for landing.

"Did you sleep last night?"

Jim laughs. "Give me some credit, Bones. Do you really think I would go on a mission this important without sleeping?"

"You once went a whole week without sleep just to prove you could. I don't put anything past you," he growls. "Have you eaten?"

"What do you think? Would I lie to you?" Jim asks innocently.

"You wouldn't," Bones says with certainty, "but you would deflect every goddamn question like you're doing right now."

Bones is right. Jim wouldn't lie, not to him. He would lie to everyone in the world a million times over before he would lie to Bones. There has…it started out at an insignificant factor in their friendship. Jim had to lie to everyone, but whenever a lie was hanging off his lips around Bones, he bit it back and told him the truth, because while everyone else recoiled at his honesty, Bones simply took it in. Eventually it became essential that even if no one else knew the truth, Bones did. Even now he doubts he could lie to him unless it meant saving his life. The idea of it makes his chest seize up a little, and he focusses on Bones instead.

Bones glances down at the tricorder and the PADD on his lap. The creases in his forehead deepen, and Jim has a renewed desire to smooth them away. He wants to reach up right now and press the lines away with the tips of his fingers; he wants to lean across their seats and chase the lines from his skin with his lips until the only creases on Bones' face are the ones by his eyes when he smiles too widely.

Even he can feel his heart rate increase this time. The tricorder beeps to indicate the sharp spike, and against his will, his breathing quickens as well. He tries to calm himself down, but now the image of him kissing away Bones' frown is seared into his mind. The more he thinks about the kiss, the faster his heart beats and the more frequently the tricorder lets out what is beginning to sound like a distress signal.

Bones immediately jumps. "Jim —" he starts. Before he can finish that thought, Jim is saved by the landing announcement, and he returns to his seat next to Lieutenant Wallace before Bones can grab him again. He can still feel his heart beating rapidly, and he can hear the whir of the tricorder as Bones continues to scan him from his seat.

"Jim —" he starts again.

"Not now, Bones. I'm fine. Crew, ready for touchdown. Report to Enterprise as soon as possible, departure at 1200 hours Earth time. All those not involved in the preparation of the Enterprise for warp should aid in loading cargo," Jim says, slipping into captain mode with ease as the shuttlecraft reaches the base.

He isn't sure how to explain to Bones that the only reason his pulse spiked was because Jim couldn't stop thinking about kissing him. He could write it off as hunger or sleep deprivation, perhaps, but Bones would snap that neither of those cause heart palpitations. Arousal does, but that is unnecessarily difficult to explain away. It is better that he just avoid Bones for as long as physically possible until the man finally writes it off as remnant stress from the firefight.

The tricorder stops whirring, and in his peripherals he can see Bones leaning back against his seat and loading the extent of the data onto the PADD. He opens his mouth as the data is processed, and Jim instantly waves him away, his nerves sharply on edge as the shuttlecraft creeps towards the base. Of course they aren't going slowly, but his need to get out of the craft, to get some slightly different recirculated air flowing through his system, makes time drag.

"Later," he hisses, his voice a lot harsher than he intended. He is saying it like he wants it to hurt Bones, and the part of him that doesn't want to deal with what just happened (which, admittedly, is most of him) is aiming for exactly that. Anything to end it here.

Bones nods, but he looks frustrated, bordering on infuriated. Jim doesn't have time for this. He doesn't have time to worry about the fact that his heart beats a little faster when Bones is too close. It's not even a bit deal, not really. His heart has always beaten faster with Bones nearby. The only difference is that this time, he wanted to press even closer.

He shakes his head and steels his nerves. He has to get to the neutral zone, complete the goddamn mission with Spock breathing down his neck about morality the whole damn time, and get back to Starfleet without starting a war with the fucking Klingons.

The plan is simple enough, but there is a dull ache in Jim's body that tells him something isn't right. He was already anxious, so the fact that his mind is racing with thoughts of kissing Bones in the most sheltered corners of the Enterprise isn't helping anything. The cold air on his lips and the ghost fingertips he can feel where Bones' hands were make him feel hollow. Admittedly, he has not slept since his post-coital nap with the Caitians, and he has not eaten since before even that. Perhaps the anxiety is fatigue and the hollowness nothing more than hunger.

He would never lie to Bones, but James T. Kirk is a seasoned veteran when it comes to lying to himself.

- **»«-**  


He is halfway to the brig when a hand wraps around his upper arm, catching him off-guard. Normally, he would have dislodged the person's grip and pinned them against the wall of the ship for sneaking up on him like that, especially now that every nerve-ending feels frayed and everything within him is shaking.

Except the hand on his arm is unmistakable — the dull nails digging against his bicep, the gentle grip of the fingers applying just enough pressure to freeze Jim in his tracks. He feels himself relax at the realisation of who it is, and even some of his most deep-seated tension loosens when Bones spins him around to face him.

He looks angry. Of course he does. Jim would like to know what he did this time, he honestly would, but he would appreciate it more in a report form on his desk by the end of the week complete with citations because he cannot deal with this right now. He has a prisoner that seems invincible, a mind so fuzzy with fatigue he feels like he's going to pass out any second, a spaceship in disrepair, and a gut feeling that everything is going to get even worse than it already is.

"I said to meet me in the brig," Jim growls, knowing his voice is too harsh, but not apologising for it. Bones doesn't even blink. "There was absolutely no reason for you to take the long way around."

"How else am I supposed to get a damn minute alone with you?" Bones snaps back in a tone so sharp that it makes the hairs on the back of Jim's neck stand on end.

"If you want my dick then we can arrange something, but here and now wouldn't exactly be —"

Bones fingers press down hard on a pressure point and Jim's breathing goes ragged. A pressure point is one thing but when there is a bruise there his vision swims and he feels dizzier than the fatigue was already making him feel. This was supposed to be easy. He wasn't supposed to feel like he is halfway dead already and making his way closer and closer. He hurts everywhere and his head is spinning. Bones means well but he isn't helping.

"Your head is pretty far up your ass, but that's not what's making you walk funny," Bones says, his voice lower but just as harsh.

"I'm fine, Bones," Jim hisses back as a crewman walks past, eyeing them nervously.

Bones' face contorts into some terrible mess of concern, anger, and disgust at Jim's words, and he feels his empty stomach drop. He was fine. He really was — battered and bruised and admittedly not walking quite right, but fine. Seeing Bones' face, seeing how the lines have deepened even in the last hour, sucks the life right out of him.

Jim flinches when Bones opens his mouth to speak again. He didn't mean to, but he can feel himself shaking again inside and it's starting to externalise. Bones tracks the movement with his eyes and immediately his gaze softens. He stops to take a deep breath, and Jim can almost see him counting down from ten in his head. It makes him want to smile, but when he tries to, the dried blood on his cheek cracks and reopens the wound.

"You haven't slept or eaten, you're probably bruised beyond belief, and from what Uhura told me of what happened down there, if you don't have at least a few broken ribs you're a walking medical miracle. You're not fine, Jim. Don't start lying to me now."

Jim can't breathe. Bones' voice…it's different. His mind has a detailed catalogue of every single one of Bones' different tones with a note on how to trigger them all. He knows that if he bats his eyelashes at Bones he will get Exasperation No°3, which is usually just a gruff _jesus christ_ , and if he staggers into his place with a broken nose and black eye that he will get Concern No°2, where Bones acts annoyed and might be a little bit annoyed, but is really more sad and worried than anything.

This is different. He has heard Bones' voice a million different times in a million different ways, but he has never heard him like this. His voice is as soft as it is when they used to crash together, drunk off their asses with Bones mumbling stories about his little girl and his days in med school. The first words were tinged with anger, but the longer Bones spoke the more his concern diluted every other emotion. Even the accusation of lying is soft and pleading more than anything else. Jim thinks this is what Bones would sound like if his heart was breaking.

"What do you want me to say, Bones?" he asks quietly, desperation seeping into voice. He wants Spock to catch up to him. He wants to stop thinking about the emptiness in the pit of his stomach and how he only feels warm where Bones is touching him. He wishes he could wrap himself around Bones even for a minute. They don't have the luxury of time.

Bones doesn't have an answer. He looks frustrated, lines in his forehead deepening, and this time Jim doesn't even think. He just reaches up and presses right between Bones' eyebrows. His face relaxes in surprise and he lets Jim smooth out his forehead, fingers gentle but insistent. He looks down when he drops his hand by his side again.

"I'll come by the sickbay after we're done with Harrison," he promises softly. When he looks up through his lashes, he can see the hint of a smile on Bones' lips. He nods, relieved, and then shakes his head.

Jim isn't sure why Bones has a cloth in his hand or where he retrieves it from, but when it is pressing over the cut on his cheek, wiping the blood both dried and fresh away, he smiles. Bones is focussed and gentle, wiping the blood away and pressing at the wound with just enough pressure to at least stymie the bleeding if not stop it. When Jim smiles wider Bones rolls his eyes, but he grins a little.

"I'm going to be the first recorded case of literally worrying to death, you know that?"

Jim laughs, and he is surprised at how genuine it is. The sound is rich and full, and his lungs ache from the force of the laughter leaving his chest. Bones' smile flashes wider, crinkling his eyes up, and Jim is thrown back to the Academy and remembering the first time he ever made Bones' smile like that.

It was three weeks in, after not having seen a single smile grace his face. Jim came into emergency during one of Bones' shifts with blood gushing from his nose and a broken wrist. When he told Bones what happened, that he had tripped on a pair of socks in their room that Bones had told him to pick up fifteen times that week, his composure cracked and he was laughing so hard he leaned against the biobed to keep him upright and Jim had to pat him on the back with his healthy hand until he could breathe again. After that it became one of his main goals (only a few levels below captaining his own vessel) to make Bones smile as much as possible.

He had failed at that lately. Seeing Bones smile like this is great.

"Laugh all you want, but I hope someone protests to my murderer speaking at my funeral," Bones says, smile still on his face and cloth still pressed to Jim's cheek.

Their eyes meet and the spark in them makes Jim's heart leap. He is glad Bones doesn't have his tricorder out, because the spike would be considerably more difficult to explain now. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to relax. He hasn't — he doesn't usually react so much to Bones' touch. Well, no. He _does_ react to Bones' touch, but he has never noticed the increased heart rate or the constriction of his chest that feels better than breathing. He hopes he will go back to not noticing it once he gets some sleep. It was easier that way.

The smiles slowly slips from Bones' face and the pressure on Jim's face eases. The hitch in his breathing is so minute, but Bones can _hear_ it, and his eyes dart down to his neck and slowly back up to his eyes. Jim swallows thickly over the lump in his throat. He is a tactical genius and yet he can't find a way to break the staring contest that he thinks neither of them will ever win.

A deliriously exhausted part of him thinks that they are about to kiss. Their faces are too close together and Bones' hand is still on his cheek. Jim's hands even start to raise from his sides as if of their own accord, fingertips seeking the cut of Bones' hips before his mind registers what he is doing.

"I am glad to see Dr McCoy is tending to your injuries, Captain, but should we not see to John Harrison as soon as possible?"

Jim has never been more grateful to Spock than he is in this moment. His hands drop back down to his sides immediately and Bones folds the cloth up like nothing happened. They step apart a little, and Jim nods sharply at his first officer. He spins on heel and walks quickly towards the brig, clinically recounting the events for Bones until he manages to push the thought of kissing him to the back of his mind.

- **»«-**  


Bones is running tests on Harrison's blood when Jim steps foot into the sickbay. He must have been waiting for him, because Jim barely gets three feet into the room before Bones is grabbing him and laying him down on a biobed. He protests whether or not this is really necessary, insisting that he doesn't have much time down here, but Bones ignores him and threatens to strap him down if he tries to leave.

Jim bites back the _kinky_ that almost slips off his tongue. Normally he would not have even hesitated, but all of his remarks today have felt heavier on his tongue than they should feel. Everything feels heavier, actually. The second he absorbed all that Harrison told him, he felt impossibly more panicked than he had already felt.

The frown on Bones' face as he takes in the readings feels like a hand clenching down on his heart. He forces the feeling aside and breathes slowly. Sleep. He needs sleep, more than anything. That and some good whiskey — the kind he knows Bones keeps _somewhere_ in the sickbay — will cure all his ails.

"When did you last get some sleep?" Bones demands immediately. The question has been hanging from his lips since they first boarded the shuttlecraft. It was less than three hours ago, and yet the weight in Jim's stomach makes it feel like days have passed.

"I slept before Pike called me in," Jim assures him. It's not a lie.

Bones doesn't miss a beat. "For how long?"

"Can't get anything past you, can I?" Jim asks, laughing breathlessly. "I don't know. Not long, maybe an hour or two. I've basically been up since we got back. Maybe five hours over the last three days? Not sure. I am tired, though."

His frown deepens in response, but he just nods and takes in the information, making a note on his PADD. As soon as they get back to Earth, Jim is going to sleep for _days_. He will submit his paperwork and then sleep until he can't sleep anymore. Bones won't even have to sedate him. He could join him, of course, but that doesn't seem likely.

Bones' hand lands gently on his ribs, and Jim has to bite down hard on his bottom lip to stop himself from crying out. Bones notices, of course he does, and his tricorder is in his hand before Jim can so much as groan. He tries to swat it away, but Bones manages to glare him into a reluctant submission.

Bones' eyes skim over the data and the creases in his forehead deepen. "You're lucky you didn't puncture a lung. Or any organ, for that matter."

"Broken?"

Bones nods. "Two broken, two bruised. Numerous lacerations and contusions."

Jim groans. "Can't you just say 'many cuts and bruises'?"

That gets a smile out of Bones that he quickly forces down, biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. Jim smiles in response, watching the tension slowly lessen in Bones' gait. He is obviously on edge, but this is _Bones_. He is always on edge about something. As Jim continues to joke around, push the boundaries of Bones' concern, he relaxes. A calm Bones is a calm Jim.

"I need to regen your injuries and stop the infection from those cuts," he tosses over his shoulder as he grabs a pair of regenerators.

Jim sits up, groaning as every part of him protests the motion, and shakes his head. Bones just barely catches the motion and he stops to fix him with a withering glare that almost makes Jim lie back down. Almost.

"Osteogenic regen takes too long, I'll be here for at least twenty minutes," Jim says, shaking his head. "I have to get back to the bridge, preferably in the next five."

Bones makes a soft, frustrated sound. "I could overrule you, you know? It is the CMO's right," he threatens, but his tone is soft and his voice resigned. Jim smiles.

They both know he could pull rank. The Captain outranks everyone except in health matters, and if Bones wanted to, he could keep Jim in here as long as he had basis for suspicion regarding his health. They also both know that he wouldn't do that to Jim. He would be acting well within his rights as CMO, but he has known Jim long enough that he knows what he can and cannot take. This is a blip on his radar.

"After this is all over, you can confine me to bed for weeks if you like," Jim promises, laying his hand over his heart.

He doesn't say the words salaciously, but they fall past his lips with the slightest bit of desire anyway. Bones' hands, likely reaching for some other torturous piece of medical equipment, still and tremor slightly at the words. He seems to shake himself minutely and his hands continue towards his goal. When he turns back around, he has three hypos in hand and something in a tube.

"I'll take that into consideration," Bones says softly, barely loud enough for Jim to hear. There is something about Bones' tone that confuses him.

He tries to puzzle out what it is, but his brain is foggy and his senses muddled. He wishes he could somehow take a five minute nap that felt like it last hours, just to refresh his tired mind a little. His decisions have been sound so far, Spock has ensured that, but a part of him is nervous about how long he will continue to be productive as his tired mind drags. He had hoped to be back on Earth and in bed by now with the situation completely handled. He should have known better than to anticipate smooth sailing.

"No, Bones, no hy — ow!" Jim screeches as his plea is ignored. He gets the hypo stabbed right into his neck, and feels whatever it is that Bones dosed him with flow through his veins.

He rubs at his neck even as the pain fades, glaring at Bones with some small part of his mind hoping he catches on fire because of his glare. No such thing happens, however, and Bones simply watches him for any reaction to the hypo. Bones nods slightly, seemingly satisfied, before nearing him with yet another hypo. Jim sticks his arm out and pushes Bones back this time, trying to keep him away.

"No, no, you're not stabbing me again until I know what you're stabbing me with," Jim says, scrabbling to cover his neck and bounding off the biobed to dodge the hypo coming at him.

Bones makes another frustrated sound, but holds up his hands and steps back from Jim, ending his unprompted assault. Jim watches him a moment for any signs of trickery before he sits on the biobed again, eyes still trained warily on the hypo and Bones' face, seeking hints of insanity. He must be prepared for another attack.

"The first one was an antibiotic you're _not_ allergic to since you're not letting me heal the cuts, this one is a painkiller, and this one is a neural stimulant. Satisfied?" Bones snaps, very clearly agitated.

A neutral stimulant. It may be the fatigue, or perhaps the distant memory of the words tracing back to long nights of studying where Bones needed it more than him, but it takes Jim a minute to remember what a neural stimulant does. When he remembers, he perks up. Anyone else would knock him out with a sedative, but Bones is giving him the exact opposite.

"I'm sorry for doubting you," Jim says, and his tone is far more genuine than he intended. He bares his neck, flourishing his hand grandly and drawing an exasperated snort from Bones.

"You should be."

He mercilessly stabs Jim with the hypo, the added force likely because Jim was being annoying or something ridiculously unprofessional like that. He swaps out hypos and hurts him again with the painkiller, an irony that makes his tired head spin. Jim groans and whines and rubs at the area, insisting that he is more injured from the hypos than anything. It is impossible considering that a hypospray is designed to function without puncturing the skin, but he has to complain about something.

"You are a child. Lift up your shirt," Bones orders, waving around the tube of mystery goop.

"If I'm a child, you telling me to lift up my shirt — _Christ_ , okay, okay," he retracts as Bones whacks him across the head. "Do they even make doctors take the Hippocratic Oath anymore?"

Bones ignores him once again and tugs Jim's shirt up himself. Jim is glad he isn't laying on the biobed sensors because he can feel his heart racing all over again and he has to bite down on his lip to calm his breathing. Bones doesn't notice, thankfully, instead training his eyes on Jim's torso. He follows his gaze and groans at what he sees. The bruises are mottled and many. The cuts are overlapping and many have dirt and grime in them. He didn't dare look in the mirror after changing his shirt, but maybe he would have been better prepared if he had.

Bones lets out a low whistle as his eyes rake over the bruising. Jim squirms uncomfortably at the scrutiny, and his squirming only gets worse when Bones places his hands against the largest bruises on his ribs. His large hands manage to cover the bruises completely, and for a moment, nothing in Jim's chest hurts except where the hand around his heart clenches further. Then Bones' hand moves away and the pain comes rushing back to him.

"I know you have to put up a strong front for the rest of the crew, but don't ever try that shit with me again, you hear?" Bones scolds.

His voice is rough and the ever-present annoyance that comes with talking to Jim is as loud as ever. Yet, there is a hint of softness that is becoming increasingly obvious as Jim's tired mind clears that cannot be ignored. Bones is rough around the edges, but he's as soft as a teddy bear inside. He is scolding Jim and he is most definitely serious about the words leaving his mouth, but the echo behind his tone whispers of a concern and care more genuine than any annoyance.

"Cross my heart," Jim promises.

Just as he can read Bones' tone, he knows Bones can read his. He is joking only to the untrained ear, only to the person who hasn't known him for four years. Anyone listening in would roll their eyes at the captain's unruly behaviour, but Bones _knows_ that he is being perfectly sincere. They both are.

Bones nods sharply and tugs on a glove. He squeezes some of the goop (ointment? It looks like ointment, as rare as that is these days) onto the gloved hand and rubs it between his fingers a little.

"This will hurt," he mumbles apologetically.

"You never hurt me," Jim admits.

Bones gets a strange look in his eyes that Jim has been seeing more and more lately. He thinks it has always been there, actually. Maybe he has just been picking up on it recently. It was in his eyes when they were last here together, with Bones telling him they weren't going for drinks together after disembarking. He has seen hints of it all day today. He wishes he knew what it meant.

He opens his mouth to respond, but doesn't seem to know what to say. He redirects his attention to spreading the ointment over Jim's skin quickly and efficiently, never pressing too hard even as he rubs it right against the blotchy skin covering his broken rib. Jim allows himself to relax into the touch.

"Topical regen. Not used a lot anymore, but it's good for situations like this," Bones mumbles, clearly trying to fill the silence. Jim hums softly as he feels the skin very, very slowly repairing itself. The touch isn't too rough, but there are still bruised and broken bones.

The hand not slathered in ointment lands on Jim's thigh, and he jolts. Bones mutters something that sounds like half of an apology and uses the thigh to brace himself. If Jim focusses on that hand, the pain from his body is completely gone. He is certain Bones is touching a bruise, but his fingertips resting on the inseam of Jim's Starfleet regulation pants are all that he can feel right now. The grip on his thigh is tight and the fingers are dangerously close to a problem Jim isn't prepared to address.

He tries to distract himself, and his mind wanders to the one question he has been asking himself since he first accepted John Harrison's surrender. The question slips out before he can think it through.

"Should I have killed him, Bones?"

Bones' hand stills on his skin, and their eyes lock. He looks…pained, Jim thinks. Pained or sad. It isn't easy to tell. Bones wears his heart on his sleeve, yet somehow Jim has never had as much trouble reading a person as he has with Bones. He does anticipate, however, that the question will draw a sigh. He is not disappointed.

"I've known you long enough to see a pattern with you, Jim. Your moral compass, even when it needs a prod, always ends up pointing in the right direction. You might not like it, but you found true north. You always do."

The words are so honest that even as the medication starts to do its job in his system, he feels something much more potent than any antibiotic running through his bloodstream. It makes his heart constrict in his chest for the thousandth time today. Even when no one else believes him, there is Bones. He might call him crazy more times than he can count, but he is always in Jim's corner.

"What did I say about the metaphors?" he asks. He means _thank you_. Bones smiles a little and nods, going back to spreading the regen.

Jim can feel his mind clearing, but it isn't clearing fast enough to make sense of the hand as it inches up his leg. Bones isn't doing it on purpose, but his hand is slipping as he tries to hold himself steady, and it is driving Jim a little closer to the cliff overlooking insanity as he does. Jim has to force himself to focus on the pain that is fading fast now that the painkiller is circulating in his veins.

Just when he thinks he is about to burst, to lean over and kiss Bones on the mouth, to see if it would break his ever-constant focus on his job, Bones straightens up and moves his hand back to his side. He drops Jim's shirt back into place and nods at him. Jim can breathe again and he doesn't need to worry about Bones realising that he was getting a little hot and bothered because his hand was in the wrong (right?) place. That just means that he has a million more things to worry about instead.

"You're not fixed, but it will have to do," Bones says, his voice slipping back to the casual grumpiness that has more fondness than anything else. Jim grins widely at him, glad to have an out.

"I'm perfect either way," Jim says, and the bark of laughter that pulls from Bones as he removes his gloves and rinses his hands draws a wider smile to Jim's face.

"Oh yes, well then, Captain Perfect, off to the bridge with you," Bones says, the sarcasm in his voice so exaggerated that it almost hurts Jim's feelings. Almost. He tries not to laugh, but he can't stop it as Bones unknowingly echoes Scotty's earlier words.

"You're coming too. I need you to weigh in on something," Jim says as his slowly recovering mind is dragged back to Harrison's words. _I suggest you open one up_. Now Jim has never been one to take to heart the words of murderers, but his curiosity would have him die before letting something that suspicious pass him by.

Bones looks, for a moment, like he wants to object, but he just nods as he dries his hands.

"Fine, but I expect you at the hospital immediately after this is all dealt with, you hear me? I don't want to be making any house calls," he says, striding quickly towards the elevator.

"Why, Doctor McCoy, surely you could make an exception for such an exceptional patient," Jim suggests, batting his eyelashes when Bones glances back at him.

He doesn't so much as blink, although the soft groan says more than words ever could about how ridiculous he thinks Jim is. He waits until Jim is in the elevator before closing the doors, but only barely.

"The only thing exceptional about you is how exceptionally annoying you are."

Jim laughs, and the laughter no longer makes his ribs hurt as much, so he lets it get too loud. Bones is mostly facing away from him, but the tips of his ears turn a little pink and Jim can see the hint of a smile on his face.

"Bones, come on, I'm sure you could make a house call for me, couldn't you? You know how much I like my apartment," he whines.

"First of all, no. Second, it's not your apartment —" he starts, and Jim cuts him off.

"Fine, _our_ apartment."

"No, it's my apartment. You just moved in three days after meeting me because you didn't like your roommate," Bones reminds him.

"He makes Spock look like the definition of fun. And you never kicked me out! Our apartment," Jim argues as they step out onto the bridge. Spock is standing rigidly, awaiting orders, and Jim waves at him to wait by the viewscreen.

"You have never so much as made motions to contribute to the rent. You would think that the genius petty thief would have figured out a way to rack up some money while terrorising small-town USA."

Jim lays a hand over his chest. "That's a low blow, Bones. I was but a lowly farmhand trying to make his way through the Academy. You were being _paid_ to study," Jim says grandly, well aware that everyone on the bridge is watching them with the usual mixture of amusement and curiosity at the lack of context for the exchange unfolding before their eyes.

"And now that you're the captain of a starship? I expect some repayment if you insist on calling it _our_ apartment, and to say your cooking and cleaning skills are limited is being generous," Bones snipes back.

As Jim's consciousness continues to clear, he realises that warmth is blooming in his empty stomach. He recognises it as the feeling of familiarity. Even when everyone is holding their breath — for the engines to work, for Starfleet to accept their peaceful alternative to firing missiles at a Klingon planet, for there to be no further threat from the Klingons — Bones is still there to bicker with him over banal issues. It has been a constant in his life for almost four years now and he still smiles a little brighter knowing that, if nothing else, he will always have Bones to second-guess him.

"I have repaid you with the quality of my friendship," he clarifies.

Bones gets that smirk, that _look_ that he always gets when he knows he has won an argument. He gets especially smug around Jim, which is both flattering and irritating. He has seen it for years and as much as he hates to lose, occasionally losing to Bones has always felt natural.

"No wonder I'm flat-broke."

He can hear Uhura cough to cover a laugh, and Sulu stifles his own with the back of his hand while looking away. Everyone else on the bridge is either doing the same or not bothering to hide their amusement. Even Spock's face twists into something resembling amusement, if it tasted as bitter as poison.

Jim lays his hand over his heart and gasps loudly. "Words hurt, Bones."

"So do empty wallets," Bones retorts, not missing a beat.

Finally, Jim admits defeat, bowing exaggeratedly and flourishing his hand as if passing a trophy to Bones. Everyone on the bridge is laughing now, and no one is bothering to hide their amusement. When he meets Bones' eyes, there is a smile in them that shines past the permascowl on his face. There is even the slightest hint of red in his cheeks as he manages to garner the applause of the deck for having bested Kirk at his own game. They all know Bones is one of the few who can.

"That's enough, don't you have work to do? Fix our ship!" Jim orders to the bridge as soon as Bones begins to look uncomfortable.

He jerks his head towards where Spock is standing, and Bones nods, coming right up next to him as they walk towards him. Bones elbows him in the side, elbow managing to avoid every single bruise he has probably memorised. He doesn't have to look over to know that the smile on Bones' lips mirrors his own.

It feels like months since they have been able to do this, to have just each other for a few minutes. It has been just over a week since they have really had time together, but not months. They were like this the day before the mission that included the whole Nibiru fiasco. Time is so relative, even more so in space, and him and Bones felt months apart before the sound of applause shattered any perceived distance. Nothing has changed, regardless of how little they have seen each other or how Jim feels about him right now.

Bones' hand holds his elbow when he attempts to deliver a retaliatory blow. He rolls his eyes and looks over at Bones. His breath catches in his throat. For a brief, beautiful moment, he sees nothing but the smile Bones reserves for him. Or rather, the smile that only Jim seems to be able to pull from his reluctant lips. It makes something hot and nameless shoot up his spine, and any confidence he was lacking was immediately replaced by that perfect smile.

He figures that if after all they have been through Bones still believes in him, he must be doing something right.

- **»«-**  


The engineers in the shuttlebay are creating an intricate house of cards when Jim whirls his way in there. They jump up, scattering the cards, the second they realise they have been caught fooling around, but Jim isn't paying attention to them. His eyes narrow in on the control panel and he recalls every bit of information he has stored on the mechanics of the shuttlebay.

He swats one of the engineers aside, apologising through gritted teeth as he awaits the call to open the shuttlebay door. The engineers step aside, their heads bowed with clear shame. Jim groans to himself but looks over at them. They probably think they're in trouble for screwing around on the job, but in all honesty, they are on shift to open and close a door, and if Jim sent down no warning that they needed to open the single door they are responsible for, they have no reason to be ready.

"Guys, it's fine," he tells them, and they relax after a few anxious glances.

"Shuttle prepared for reentry," Dr Marcus' voice rings clearly from his comm. He nods to himself and his hands work over the console.

The second the shuttle is entirely within the Enterprise, he shuts the door and runs out from the safely oxygenised booth into the rest of the bay despite protests from his engineers. The air is extremely thin in the shuttlebay, even as it is being reoxygenised, and Jim is gasping for breath by the time he reaches the shuttlecraft.

He yanks the door before the shuttle touches down, pulling himself into the cabin. He takes two quick steps towards Bones to grab him by both shoulders. He isn't sure which of them needs the steadying, but they both stumble when the shuttle touches down. Bones is favouring his left arm and Jim's eyes dart down to it immediately.

There is a tear in his uniform. It is small, but visible. The amount of force it takes to tear one of these uniforms…it could not have come from just the pressure of the torpedo closing on his arm. It was from the struggle, the panic. Even minutes later, Bones is still flexing his fingers, trying to get the blood flowing properly again.

"You have to see —" Bones starts, tilting his head in the direction of the torpedo. Jim doesn't bite.

"The only thing I have to see is your arm," Jim growls, not even sparing the torpedo a glance. He's certain it is important, but it is insignificant to him as long as Bones is struggling to hide that he is injured.

"Jim, I'm fine," he insists.

He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. Bones looks irritated, but doesn't protest when Jim reaches for his uniform shirt, tugging it off his body. Bones' hand reflexively covers the injured area, but not before Jim sees the brilliant red edging into purple and blue. It looks like his own chest looked before Bones got at it with the regen. Even now that his body is slowly healing itself, every step sends a spike of pain dulled by the painkillers up through his body. If he can feel this much pain with painkillers, he can't imagine how badly Bones' likely-broken humerus hurts.

"Let me," Jim begs softly, prying Bones' hand away from his arm. He winces, but yields.

The area is nearly the size of his hand, and even within these ten minutes the bruise has developed considerably. He doesn't dare touch it, but he can see from how the bone is sitting beneath his skin that it is definitely broken. His slips his fingers around Bones' elbow, keeping his arm still as he leans to stare at the injury. He can feel the frown pressing at his lips. An even more compelling force tells him to kiss the injury, as if that could improve anything.

He straightens up and meets Bones' eyes. "Weren't you saying something earlier about putting up strong fronts?"

He means to sound angry, but his voice catches in his throat. He swallows down the directionless anger and just sounds worried. He _is_ worried. Bones is injured and he doesn't have any osteogenic regen because he sprinted down from the bridge before anyone could so much as reassure him that Bones was coming back in one piece.

Bones laughs at that, jerking his arm too hard and cutting it short with a grimace. Jim frowns and looks back down at his arm. He lets his fingers hover over the brightly bruised skin, but can't bring himself to touch it. He means to clamp his hand down on Bones' shoulder to steady the both of them again, but his shaking fingers curl around his neck instead. He presses his thumb right against the joint beneath Bones' ear, feeling some of the tension Bones holds himself with disappear.

"I shouldn't have sent you down there," Jim says hoarsely. He coughs to clear his throat, but not before sincerity seeps into his voice.

"You _should_ have beamed Dr Marcus up," Bones retorts quickly. "I guess you're fucking up a lot today."

Jim smiles wryly at that. Logically, he should have beamed Carol up. Sulu and the rest of the bridge crew were waiting for him to give the order. At the same time, every person on the bridge had seen him and Bones bickering less than an hour earlier. It was really only minutes, twenty at most. Jim can still hear the snickers from the rest of the bridge crew as Bones went for the jugular, can feel Bones' eyes on his neck when he bowed his head deeply in defeat. Everyone on the bridge knows that they live together. Some of them probably think they are sleeping together.

He wonders if they thought he would let Dr Marcus die down there with Bones, fighting to the last millisecond to figure out how to disarm the torpedo. It should be an easy _of course not_ , but the words don't even reach the forefront of his mind. He thinks about his real answer, and his fingers just tighten around Bones' neck, reminding both of them that he's _here_ and safe. The 'what ifs' don't matter.

 _Dr Marcus_ , he remembers suddenly, and he drops his hands from Bones' face. He can see a shock of blonde hair out of the corner of his eye. She is watching them carefully, subtly. Her eyes are staring directly at the torpedo, but their exchange is clearly in her peripherals. She slips up and follows Jim's hand with her eyes as it falls, before quickly looking back at the torpedo. He can see Bones blushing lightly as they both glance at her.

"Thank you, Dr Marcus," Jim says. She looks up, clearly embarrassed that she was caught staring, but Jim just smiles at her. "I'm glad you saved his legendary hands," he tacks on to cut the tension.

She laughs, but it sounds forced. She is visibly shaken from the events on the planetoid. Jim frowns. He hopes she takes something to calm her nerves. They'll hopefully get home before anything else goes south, but until then, she needs to be alert.

Bones raises an eyebrow at him. Jim closes his eyes and groans softly. He needs to think before he speaks. That did not quite come out right. She probably thinks there are a million untoward things Jim does with Bones' hands.

She just smiles, though. "I wouldn't have left without him."

It is a noble thing to say, but not untrue. Unless Sulu took the reigns and beamed her up, she would have died down there. If she had not been so quick to act, they would both be dead. Bones would be —

He cuts that thought off right there. It is done, they are both safe, and the day will go on. Hopefully, they will finally get the engines functioning enough to get back to Starfleet. He nods at Carol and gets a sharp nod in return as she gathers her wits.

She steps past Jim and down the steps of the shuttle. He watches her until she is in the booth with the engineers, before tuning back to Bones.

"I should have gone down instead of you," Jim apologises quietly. Bones shakes his head, his hand reflexively covering his arm.

"What, and get another bone broken? Don't be stupid. Besides, I'm pretty sure no one's hands are as unsteady as yours."

"My aim is phenomenal!" Jim argues, feeling some of the tension in his shoulders relax and final letting his posture slump a little.

Bones sighs and scratches his ear, right where Jim's hand had been only moments ago. He thinks the same thing, because his hand stills before dropping to his side.

"It did look like you were going to kiss me," Bones says with a gruff laugh.

For the second time in as many minutes, Jim doesn't think before he speaks.

"What if I was?"

If Jim could figure out a way to school his expression into something resembling a smirk, he thinks he could get away with this. His face doesn't change, even as Bones gives him time to laugh along with him. His laugh is rich and full, and when the corners of his eyes crinkle a little, Jim feels his resolve crumble further.

It has been a long day, but he thinks he should at least be able to force a laugh. He is usually an expert. Right now, the sound sticks in his throat. He can't cough it out. He can feel it suffocating him as it slowly dawns on Bones that he is the only one laughing. The smiles slides off his face slowly, giving Jim ample time to retract the statement. He doesn't — _can't_ — and Bones' eyes pin him in place. He doesn't look...he doesn't look like much of anything. He is just staring at Jim, his expression neutral.

Then, his eyes flicker down to Jim's lips. It is just for a fraction of a second, but that millisecond makes a world of difference. Their eyes lock again and Jim feels himself shrinking in on himself. But Bones looked at his lips. Bones is _thinking_ about kissing him. He can see it in the concentration in his face and the way his entire frame tenses, as if holding himself back from something.

"Bones," he begins, his voice rough. He doesn't get interrupted with a kiss. He had been hoping for something overwhelming like that to happen to cover the fact that he really doesn't know what to say.

He wants to do something dramatic. He wants to pull Bones into a kiss that will sweep him off his feet, while still not hurting his arm further. He wants to kiss him and see what happens because the way Bones is staring at him makes him think that he will like what happens. He wants to know why this has come out today of all days. He wants to know that he will wake up tomorrow and feel the same way.

Bones makes the first move. His uninjured arm raises slowly from his side, his eyes fixed on Jim's face. He is giving him all the time in the world to back out. For a moment, Jim thinks he should. He thinks he should know better than to kiss his best friend at risk of fucking things up. He should know by now how little he gets along with the whole concept of relationships. Except, he and Bones are different. They're easy. They have always been easy; there is no reason this shouldn't be too.

"Captain," a clear voice says, snapping them both from their reveries and making them jolt. Bones' hand drops back to his side and they stare out the shuttle door. Dr Marcus is standing there, looking apologetic for interrupting what she clearly thought was a moment. Except this time, she isn't the only one.

"The engineers are preparing to beam the torpedo down to medical," she relays clinically.

Jim nods absently. Then, the words hit him. "Medical?"

Carol nods and tilts her head towards the torpedo. He strides quickly past Bones, who already has his hand on a PADD with data scrolling across the screen like nothing happened. Maybe nothing did. He shakes himself internally and peers at where the torpedo popped open.

He has to blink a few times before it really registers that it is a _person_ in that torpedo.

"What —" he starts.

"No idea," Bones admits, shaking his head. "I didn't have a tricorder with me. I wasn't exactly expecting to find a body."

Jim studies his face. A moment ago, he could have sworn that they were going to kiss. That flare of intensity has been extinguished so thoroughly that Jim questions whether it was ever there. Was it just a figment of a tired mind running on adrenaline and whatever chemicals Bones shot into his veins? He shakes his head.

"I gotta talk to Spock, I'll meet you in medical. Carol, will you ensure that Dr McCoy receives treatment before taking a crack at the torpedo man?" If Bones can act like nothing happened, so can he.

He can hear Bones' protestations, but Carol drowns them out instantly. "Of course, Captain. He won't do anything until he gets patched up."

Jim nods his appreciation and fixes Bones with his most adamant glare. He thinks his 'captain' shows best in this glare, but Bones looks just as unimpressed as ever. He isn't his captain, not to Bones. He is the kid who moved into his apartment and never left, who still leaves apple cores in the sink instead of putting them in the compost chute, who never let Bones sleep when he had an exam to study for. He usually loves Bones a little for that. Right now it mostly just hurts.

Bones still looks irritated, but he nods grudgingly and promises to get his arm looked at first. He will probably do what he did to Jim — just slather on some topical regen before getting back to work. Anything is better than this. Jim hopes he will at least wrap it up, if he wants so badly to get back to work and can't be bothered to do a full regen.

Carol returns his smile and jogs off in the direction of the engineers, giving them the signal to lock onto the torpedo. She chatters on her comm to the sickbay informing them of an incoming object, and once she gets her confirmation, she gives the thumbs up and he and Bones watch the torpdeo disappear before their eyes.

When Jim meets Bones' eyes again, he still sees none of the intensity that he is beginning to believe he really did imagine. Maybe Bones was just reaching his arm up to cover his other arm once again. Except...Jim didn't imagine the way Bones' eyes darted down to his lips. That was real.

He flashes Bones a brilliantly blinding smile and watches as the impersonal expression on his face crumbles to dust. Even Bones, who is always first to roll his eyes at Jim's antics, cannot withstand his smile completely. Jim had guessed that he was on the verge of giving in, and the way Bones slumps tells him all he needs to know.

Jim opens his mouth, not sure whether he is going to say something intelligent or if everything he has been thinking about Bones all day is going to come out. A part of him wants to say _I can't stop thinking about kissing you_ and _we're not doing anything different and yet nothing is the same_. He wants to tell him that when he said _you've always been mine_ he did not add _and you always will be_ to the end of it because he thought it would come out wrong. He wants to say it anyway because if he was really afraid of being wrong, he never would have done a damn thing in his life.

As Bones steps close to him all the words that were on his tongue dissolve and his mouth goes dry. His eyes are wild, crazed, and they keep dashing down to stare at Jim's lips every few seconds. It is like he can't make up his mind as to whether to kiss Jim or not, and Jim tilts his head, hoping to get him closer to a decision. Bones tracks the movement with his eyes before clamping his eyes shut, looking pained.

He doesn't open his eyes before he starts speaking. "Jim, I don't know what game you're playing—"

"I'm not playing any game," he interrupts, a part of him genuinely insulted at the prospect.

Bones' eyes flash open, and for a moment, he looks dangerous. Then they soften around the edges until Jim can't tell for his life what Bones is thinking as he stares at him. Jim wants to kiss Bones, and he wants to kiss Jim. Somewhere in Bones' brain, that simple thought must have been stretched to insane proportions until it became a confused mess. Jim wants to lean up and kiss him to clear things up.

"Later. We both have things to do. We'll talk about this when you have gotten some sleep and are actually thinking straight," Bones decides, stepping away from Jim with a last glance at his lips.

Jim's heart sinks, hovering somewhere near his spleen and aching to no end. He can't breathe as he watches Bones start to walk away. He deliriously thinks that his lungs have literally stopped working before he manages to gasp a breath that, on exhale, comes out as Bones' name. The man freezes and slowly looks back over his shoulder.

"It's not like that," he says. He thinks there has to be some sort of grand statement to insert here, something that will make Bones believe him.

The way Bones' forced smile twists on his face makes Jim's heart jump straight back up to his throat.

"Later," he repeats, and he cradles his arm perfunctorily as he retreats to the safety of the sickbay.

Jim opens his mouth to call after him, but his lips cannot speak words his brain hasn't formed. He runs a hand through his hair, allowing himself a full twenty seconds to regain composure. Later doesn't mean never. Later might be good. They'll be back on Earth and all this nonsense will have been sorted by then. Bones is right — they have things to do. Very Daunting Things, such as dealing with the fact that there is a man inside that torpedo.

He straightens himself up and closes the shuttle door behind him. He prides himself on how well he manages to walk with his head held high despite how heavily Bones' forced smile weighs on his mind.

- **»«-**  


The brief flare of victory that lit his spirit once again by the other ship exploding is immediately extinguished when the Enterprise loses power. Or rather, when she loses power and does not regain it within a matter of seconds. Auxiliary power does not kick in, and within seconds the ship begins a rapid descent.

Bones, who until seconds ago had been smiling softly at the 'human popsicles' that were Khan's crew, springs into action before anyone else can so much as process what had happened. Jim watches, entranced for a moment, as Bones rushes around the sickbay calling for emergency procedures and strapping patients down himself.

Jim is scared. He wouldn't say it aloud while in a crisis, but he can feel the fear freezing his mind. Bones has to be _terrified_. Everything he has always said about the infirmity of spacecraft is crashing down on their heads, and yet when it matters, Bones shoves his own fear aside to care for his patients. The warmth at how well-suited Bones is for the position of CMO counters the icy fear in his belly. If Bones can stay calm, so can he.

"Scotty!" he calls, pulling the other man out of his own mind as he clings to the table edge and wills himself not to fall. "We have to get to Engineering."

After a beat, Scotty nods vigorously. Jim nods in return. "Try comming Chekov, ask him for an update." Jim hesitates, glancing at Bones as he secures the last patient. "I'll be right along."

He waits until Scotty acknowledges the command before crossing the sickbay to where Bones is leaned over a console, trying fruitlessly to get something — _anything_ — back online. Jim spins him around to face him, hoping desperately that the starship doesn't flip and they don't end up crushed against the ceiling of the sickbay.

"If I can't fix this, get off the ship," Jim says. His voice is tight in his throat, but his words steady. Bones looks vaguely ill and as the words leave Jim's mouth that look only strengthens.

"Don't be stupid. All you have to do is get power back online. There will be no _leaving_ ," Bones says. His voice isn't certain, though, for the same reason Jim isn't.

"Auxiliary power is still offline, Bones. It's bigger than that. So when it's your time to evacuate, _evacuate_."

Bones eyes him warily. "You make it sound as if you won't be evacuating too."

It isn't a question, because Bones doesn't have to ask. Jim knows he can see it in the set of Jim's jaw, in the flare in his eyes. All the things that Bones insists always give Jim away are giving him away right now. He doesn't have to ask because he is answering his own question. He knows the second the words leave his mouth that Jim isn't planning to leave.

It has never been a case of one of them knowing the other better; they have always simply _known_ each other. So when comprehension dawns on Bones, Jim sees it in his face. The creases in his forehead get deeper and Jim fears the laughter lines he once revelled in deepening will be forever replaced by stress ones. Bones knows that someone has to go down with the ship if all else fails. Someone has to use all remaining power to ensure the starship does not miss the water. Bones knows that, if it came down to Jim not thinking he could save the ship, he would knock every last crew member out if that's what it took to get them off the ship. Jim would be incinerated along with the Enterprise upon re-entry, but he would ensure that the wreckage land in the water.

All of this conveyed in a simple look. They have always said more to each other than has left their lips, Jim thinks. He has been glad to have someone he doesn't have to speak to in order to communicate with. He has been glad to have Bones. If it is the last thing he does, he will make sure he is safe.

The defiance in Bones' eyes makes Jim smile. "I'll order you if I have to," he says.

"You'll have to write me up for insubordination, then," Bones says gruffly. "I'm not leaving without you."

Jim wants to protest, but in reality, he doesn't think he could fight Bones on this. He has never left without him. Every person in the world would leave him in the dust and Bones would be there with a change of clothes and a bottle of bourbon to make it all a little easier. Bones has never left him behind willingly and never would. Jim stands up a little straighter, the fire reignited in his eyes.

"Right then. I guess I have no choice but to fix this," he says. When the spark in Bones' eyes mirrors his own, Jim smiles widely. It is mostly for show, but enough of the false confidence inspires real determination.

Bones almost smiles in return. "No no-win scenarios, right?"

Jim shrugs. "Even if I'm not there to see it, everyone evacuating successfully sounds like a win to me."

"It wouldn't be to me."

It takes Jim a moment for the words to hit him, and when they do, he feels something deep in his stomach wrench. It is a grand statement. From anyone else, it would sound trite or contrived, but from Bones… _Christ_. Bones is telling him that he is worth more to him than four hundred other lives. Jim would say the same about him. This is where he kisses Bones, he thinks.

"Captain!" Scotty's voice breaks through the moment. "Chekov said he'd meet us down in Engineering."

Jim turns to acknowledge this, but waves Scotty away. "Go on, I'll catch up," he says.

He turns around, taking a deep breath and recalling the way Bones' eyes flickered to his lips. He uses that as the courage he needs to crowd Bones against the console. He slips his hands around Bones' face, fingertips dragging against the stubble along his jaw before they curl into his hair. He sees the look of surprise on Bones' face for an instant before he presses their lips together.

He meant it to be a peck, nothing to write home about. He meant it to be a promise that they _would_ kiss again as soon as Jim sorted out the power situation. He meant to hurry it along because, as much as he hated to admit it, he was burning up valuable time by moping over his feelings for Bones instead of performing some massive rescue of his crew. Then Bones' hands slip up his back and he realises there is no point in doing this halfway.

It's nothing like he imagined, in the sparing moments today he had dared to imagine such a thing. When he was sitting on the shuttle as it touched down at the starbase what feels like years ago, he had considered it for a traitorous moment. He had imagined it would be all _new_. He had kissed men before, of course, but he thought it would be entirely different to kiss Bones.

Instead, the slide of their lips together, the burn of Bones' stubble, and the way his hands clench Jim's shirt so hard that it might tear feels familiar. Kissing Bones is suddenly as instinctive as breathing, as natural as dreaming, and as fulfilling as success has always felt to him. He feels as if perhaps they should have been doing this all along, and that somewhere along the way something important was lost in translation.

He tastes cinnamon and replicator coffee that tastes just like real coffee, although Bones claims to taste a difference. He smells like antiseptic, aftershave, coffee, and paperback books — like their apartment. Perhaps the apartment smells like Bones.

It feels like home, kissing Bones, and Jim always knew he made his home in people rather than places.

He pulls out of the kiss before he can let it stretch, before it officially becomes threatening to the time it will take him to save the crew. He thinks absently that having kissed Bones once, he would kiss him until they burnt up in Earth's atmosphere. It is only his moral compass, as Bones had called it, tugging him out of the kiss.

"If you die after that, you're the most selfish bastard in the universe," Bones says, pulling away and cursing him violently. He knows Jim has to go. He is not stopping him.

"I guess I better not die then, yeah?" Jim grins. "When I get back, I'll be expecting a second kiss."

"When you get back you'll be lucky if you don't get an ass-whooping," Bones grumbles, but his cheeks are flushed and his hair is sticking up and his lips are bright red, and under the panic and annoyance and _everything_ Bones shoves forward, Jim can see a smile.

"As long as it's from you, babe," Jim says as he shoots Bones one last grin before turning back to Scotty, who still hasn't left. Beyond his fear, there is a smile on his face that Jim mirrors on his own.

The squawk of indignation from Bones at the word _babe_ is enough to shake the last bits of doubt from Jim's mind. Bones has all the confidence in the world in him, and he should as well. He has something to come back to now anyway. He knows he can come back to see Bones after all is said and done, and he will get pulled into a tight hug and a searing kiss that will feel like they never stopped.

The question is not if he will fix the ship, but how.

- **»«-**  


His irradiated body still feels the warmth of joy when the ship's power comes back online. It is that joy, he thinks, and not any real muscle power that propels him far enough down the shaft to get within shouting distance of Scotty. He can taste the blood in his mouth and feel his weak, heavy body struggling to traverse the short distance between the shaft and the radiation chamber, and he can barely talk levelly let alone shout for Scotty, but he does. He shouts until his throat is hoarse and the sweat on his forehead is thick, although he confesses that may be from continued radiation exposure.

He smiles in relief when Scotty presses his face against the glass, his smile met with a look of horror. He laughs breathlessly, and the laughter burns his throat on the way out. He refuses to lose his sense of humour along with his life. His smile will be the last thing that darkness robs him of.

It takes Scotty a moment, but he jumps into action, patting himself looking for his communicator. He is grumbling, his voice almost as angry as it is panicked, about how the intelligence standards for the title of 'Captain' must be declining because he never imagined he would be on a starship with the biggest idiot in the world as his commanding officer.

"Scotty, calm down," Jim orders softly. All he gets for his pacifying efforts is a venomous glare.

"I'm comming Dr McCoy, maybe he can —" Scotty starts, and for the first time since Jim realised minutes earlier that he was going to die, he feels fear fill his body.

"Don't!" he rushes out, waving as frantically as his weak limbs can muster before Scotty gets his hands on his communicator. "Please, don't call Bones, Scotty. Please."

He sounds pathetic. He doesn't sound like a captain at all. He sounds every bit as weak as he feels, and he isn't surprised when he is faced with a look of anger and indignation rather than compliance. He wouldn't listen to himself either if he was giving orders in this voice.

"Why the hell not?" Scotty demands. He finds his communicator and extracts it from its pocket, ready to flick it open.

Jim doesn't think he can do commanding at the moment. Scotty should listen to him regardless of tone — he _is_ still the captain, he's not dead yet — but he knows his crew as well as he knows himself. Scotty would sooner defy an order of Jim's he deemed ridiculous than he would let him die. So Jim has to aim for something else, something easier. Compassion.

"I'm dying, Scotty. I don't even think I can make it to the glass," he says. He does not have to play up the weakness in his voice; rather, he has to stop fighting it. He has to stop putting up the front. He figures there isn't much point to it anymore. Scotty will — he'll probably be the last person to see Jim.

"All the more reason to comm McCoy!" Scotty argues.

"And have him do what?" Jim asks. He attempts to yell the words, to crawl a little closer to the glass. His weak arms barely budge him and his throat coats with blood as only a brittle sound escapes. "We can't open that door, not unless we want to irradiate the whole area. Anyone would die trying to get me out, and the radiation levels could throw off everything that I just fixed."

Scotty's grip on his comm loosens as he realises the truth behind Jim's words. He struggles, eyes dating around Engineering like the walls of the ship herself could tell him all the answers he need to hear. There is nothing but the soft whirring of the warp core and the distant sounds of mayhem as the ship is righted and everyone has to rush back to their now-functioning stations.

When he realises there is nothing that can be done, not for Jim, Scotty's face shutters and his communicator slips to the ground, clattering at his feet. He stares at Jim as he tries to slowly drag himself closer to the glass, and Jim flashes a pained smile. He thinks the blood he can taste on his teeth must limit the reassurance.

"Jim, I —" he starts. He sounds as if he wants to protest, but there is nothing to argue. "He'd want to be here."

Jim groans as he hits the floor of the compartment, but he takes some semblance of pride in having made it out of the chute at least. He manages to pull himself up, but has to stop moving to breathe slowly. The air is thick and hot, and it burns lungs that are already singed beyond belief. It is hard to believe he's not dead yet. A part of him wishes he knew more about radiation sickness so he could know how much time he has left. The rest of him figures that it doesn't matter. _Not much_ , he knows for sure. Minutes.

He lets Scotty's words sink in. He's not wrong — Bones would want to be here. But Bones would…he wouldn't listen, not to either of them. He would try to get Jim out of there even if it meant neither of them would make it out alive. Noble, but pointless. Jim was going to die either way, and he didn't want to take Bones with him.

"I don't want him here," he lies, feeling it well up in his throat. "He can't watch me die, Scotty. It would kill him."

"But —"

"Spock," Jim says. "Comm Spock."

It is selfish, but Jim supposes he is used to being selfish. He needs someone here. Bones would never be able to watch him die, but Spock wouldn't endanger the lives of all those onboard. He is smarter than that, smarter than Bones. He wants Bones here, but that would do more harm than good. Jim needs a friend. Scotty is great, but not what he needs. He needs Spock.

When Scotty nods and scrambles for his comm, Jim lets himself close his eyes for a moment. Good. He's safe now. At least, as safe as he can get when he feels Death's rattling breath over his skin. He won't have to worry about anyone else dying. Bones…

He remembers that night in the bar. _That night in the bar_ , he thinks, with a laugh that comes out as a choking cough. It is as if it was weeks ago. How can his mind stretch a day to ridiculous proportions when only hours pass in reality? It was last night that Bones told him he wasn't dying unless Bones was behind it. He doesn't think Bones would let him die here, not on his watch. He would die before he watched Jim die.

And Jim is going to die anyway. Even now he can feel brittle, skeletal fingers wrapping around his throat, his heart, his lungs, his brain. The fingers, although thin and sharp, feel soothing to his aching body. He doesn't feel pain, only the pressure of the hands gripping him, urging him to let go. He wonders how many hands Death has, and who else's life he is taking as his fingers grip tighter. He wonders if Death is holding someone else on his ship hostage at the moment, someone suffering from burns too painful or head trauma too severe. He wonders if, with a last plea, Death would settle for his life being the last taken of his crew.

"Jim!" Scotty's voice cuts through his brain, and he gasps in a ragged breath as Death retreats. _Not yet_ , he begs, and Death acquiesces. "I thought I'd lost you there for a minute. Commander Spock's on his way."

Jim opens his eyes and drags himself a little closer to the glass. One last push. "Thanks, Scotty."

Scotty nods, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead and rubbing at his eyes to press away the moisture Jim could see rising. He felt his stomach twist. People would mourn him. He wishes dying did not come with such an imposition. There are enough lives to mourn, enough things to rebuild. Right now he thinks he would prefer it all to end with a whimper.

When Scotty speaks again, his voice is soft. "Anything I can pass on to Dr McCoy?"

Jim smiles wryly, and the stretch makes the raw and swelling skin of his face burn. It's hard to maintain, but he forces himself to smile. Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, Carol, Bones — they're all going to live. Everyone under his command at this moment is going to live. He has everything in the world to be happy about.

"I wouldn't know what to say," he admits after a moment.

"Sometimes an 'I love you' does wonders, if you don't mind me saying," Scotty says.

Jim can't help but laugh. He sounds genuine, but the rough laughter is punctuated with a cough that sends a fine spray of blood onto the compartment floor. He licks the blood from his lips and edges closer to the window. He considers the advice. He wonders, if he had been told a week ago that he is in love with Bones, would he have believed it? Not immediately, but he doubts it would have taken much. It is hardly a stretch from their friendship. They spend so much time together, care so much about each other. The only thing they were missing, Jim supplied when he held Bones against the console and kissed him for the first time. He didn't expect it to also be the last.

He wonders if he should pass that message on, for a moment. He wonders if Bones would feel heartened or wrecked by the words. He almost lets the words leave his mouth, but he bites his lower lip. He can feel the raw skin tear beneath his teeth, but he doesn't think about that. He knows Bones. He would never want to hear _I love you_ from dead lips.

"I wish it were that simple," Jim says instead.

"Do you love him?" Scotty asks, his voice tight as he discreetly dabs at his eyes again. Jim pulls himself closer to the glass, feeling his stomach clench without Death's grip.

"'Course I do. He's my best friend."

"That's not what I mean."

"I know."

They don't speak for a few long moments. The ship is roaring with life and the noise of the radiation chamber is cut through with Jim's coughing as he pulls himself towards the class. He can hardly believe that a sound so empty, so wretched, could escape from his lungs. He wonders absently, tasting blood in his mouth again, if the coughing is really just Death speaking through him, telling him he's had enough. _Not yet_ , he urges again.

He is delirious, he knows that. Even at his craziest Jim can recognise insanity in a mirror. He thinks that he is allowed to go a little mad when dying, that he has that right. Solace can be found in the most unlikely of places, and if that means pretending the rattle of blood in his chest is not a sound he could ever make, then there is no harm left to be done.

When Jim gets close enough to touch the glass, he feels another smile rise to his lips. His last victory, he thinks. Not dying while hanging halfway out of an irradiated chute seems like a victory to him, however small it may be. Scotty stares down at him, his hands shaking even as he attempts to clench them into fists.

He has to say something to Bones. Even if it is just something banal like _I forgot to pick up milk yesterday_ or _don't go arming any more torpedoes,_ he knows he has to say something. If the last few words he said to Bones were a promise to return, he doesn't know how he can lay on a biobed for an autopsy without having said something more, something better.

"Can you just…tell him I'm sorry?" Jim asks. He doubts there are any words more suitable than that.

A fresh wave of desperate sadness washes over Scotty's face, and he turns away, struggling to keep composure. He steps aside as the sound of running footsteps reach both of their ears, but he casts Jim a final glance through wet eyes.

"Aye, Captain," he promises, just as Spock comes into sight.

Jim smiles softly, and manages to reach up and close the warp core entrance as Spock approaches the door to the chamber.

When the word _friend,_ leaves Spock's lips without hesitation or doubt, Jim finds his final bit of solace in knowing that he is not alone. This time when the soothing hands of Death draw him closer, he does not fight.

- **»«-**  


The first thing Jim thinks, when his eyes open to the echo of Captain Pike's words in his brain, is that the afterlife is very white. And clean, too. Everything smells of antiseptic and the sharp shock of the overhead light hurts his head. It resembles a hospital room, in look and smell.

He supposes that, since he doesn't appear to be in a pit of fiery inferno burning for his sins, he somehow managed to end up on the right side of the afterlife. He didn't expect a lot out of death, so he supposes that this is a somewhat pleasant surprise. He had not anticipated feeling anything, but he supposes that everything comes with a price. At least his insides no longer feel fried. It's more like a dull ache in remembrance of alleviated pain, usually left behind by a freshly-regenerated bone.

He blinks, and his eyes track movement from beside whatever he is laying on. He breathes heavily, a gasp caught in his throat, because _Bones._ Bones is here. Bones is wherever Jim is, and if Jim is dead, that means Bones —

"Oh don't be so melodramatic. You were barely dead," Bones drawls, waving over him with a tricorder.

 _Barely dead_.

"It's the transfusion that really took its toll. You were out cold for two weeks," he continues, almost sounding reprimanding, as if it is Jim's fault it took him two weeks to wake up from _death_.

"Transfusion?"

Jim's head is racing, and he quickly catalogues the room. Scanners and screens. He's on a biobed, in a hospital room. It smells like antiseptic and there is a bottle of the stuff not far off. His heart is beating and he has to take a piss and he can feel his fingertips, and unless the afterlife is some sick joke, he is _alive_.

"Your cells were heavily irradiated; we had no choice," Bones says.

His perfect mask of professionalism wavers as he blinks rapidly, eyes betraying him. He looks tired. Oh, he is in his proper Starfleet regulation uniform, but his eyes are shadowed and the lines in his face as deep as ever. He looks exhausted, like he has been hovering over Jim's bed for — what was it? Two weeks?

Transfusion. It takes a minute for it all to process. It hasn't felt like weeks to him, but minutes. Seconds, even. His head was filled with rushing thoughts and memories for a handful of moments, before he was rushed back into consciousness. Everything is still fresh in his mind.

"Khan?"

Bones launches into a brief explanation of what Jim had deduced the second the word _transfusion_ hit him. It meant that Khan survived the explosions and that everyone was safe now. He is probably frozen somewhere once again, which if you ask Jim, is most certainly for the best. He watches Bones relax slowly as realisation that Jim is alive, is breathing, is _conscious_ right before his eyes, truly sinks in. The next time Bones catches his eyes, there is a glint of happiness in them.

"Tell me, are you feeling homicidal, power-mad, despotic?" he asks, a grin just barely managing to sneak past his mask and cover his face. Jim wants to kiss it off his face and then back on again. He had two weeks to sleep on it. He hasn't changed his mind about a damn thing.

He responds with just enough exasperation to make Bones' lips turn up even more. "No more than usual. How'd you catch him?"

"I didn't," Bones says, stepping to the other side of the bed. Jim had failed to notice anyone else in the room, but seeing Spock makes him smile. The last time he smiled at Spock, all he had tasted was blood. His mouth tastes like mint toothpaste, and he'll have to ask later whether one of the nurses did that for him or if Bones took it upon himself.

He is glad he didn't reach up and kiss the grin off Bones' face when he had the chance. He doesn't think that Spock would particularly appreciate the show, and Bones may have just knocked him out for getting his heart rate up this soon after waking. Besides, there are probably still rules about attending physicians and inappropriate relations with patients. He hopes that Bones writes him down for 'home-care' sooner rather than later.

"You saved my life," he says as Spock approaches his bedside. It was minutes ago, to him, that he said goodbye. _Friend_. The word is as clear in his mind as anything.

Bones, of course, has to interject. "Uhura and I had something to do with it too you know." Jim throws him a smile and he wants to laugh, but his throat is still scratchy and his voice hoarse.

Spock continues, voice level and logical as ever. "You saved my life, Captain, and the lives of the —"

Jim groans inaudibly. When they're back on their ship and business is as usual again, he is going to have to talk to Spock about letting loose a little. He is suddenly bombarded with the mental image of Spock in a loose shirt, pushing back long hair and slouching over the side of a bar. He shakes his head. Letting loose is perhaps not what he is going for. It's a little too terrifying of a prospect.

"Spock, just…thank you," he says.

"You are welcome, Jim."

And for a moment, it is just him, Spock, and Bones. The three of the exchange looks that say nothing in particular, and yet they all know they carry more weight than any words could. They had forged their bonds before — Jim with Bones back at the Academy, Jim with Spock when fighting Nero, and Bones with Spock when they finally worked together in a joint effort to blow up the Vengeance — but here, it felt to Jim, the three of them reached an understanding. Maybe it was the medication, maybe he was still groggy, and maybe he was still back in that little compartment on the Enterprise, but he doesn't think he is reading anything wrong.

Spock bows his head slightly, and that breaks the moment, but not in an ill-timed way. Everything runs its course. Jim relaxes farther back into his pillow again and Bones goes back to fiddling with the machine to Jim's left. Spock's lips upturn in what may just be — if his eyes do not mistake him — the ghost of a smile.

"I will leave you to your patient, Doctor," Spock says, taking his leave of the hospital room. Jim watches the door close behind him and feels his throat tighten a little. Spock saved his life.

He has not reconciled the fact that he is alive, not yet at least. He had a good ten minutes to prepare for his death. It was far from sufficient, but he had accepted the fact that he would no longer exist.. Now that he is alive and breathing without blood bubbling in his throat, it takes him a moment to accept it.

He groans and sits up, but before he can get comfortable in an upright position, one of Bones' hands presses him firmly back down to the bed, giving him a withering glare that threatens sedation if he tries that again. He grudgingly relaxes when Bones' hand doesn't move away.

"Was it the tribble?" he asks as Bones pulls out his tricorder again. Bones looks confused. The fatigue and time passed make some things clearer to Jim. "Did it come back to life?"

Comprehension hits Bones' face and he nods. "Just in time, too. I was minutes away from starting the examination," he says. He sounds like he is trying and failing to keep it professional, and that makes Jim smile.

Then, he frowns. "Did the Ethics Commission get after you?" Bones shakes his head, smiling softly at the clearly favourable results popping up from the tricorder.

"I got away with it. I have to write a paper on the test effects, though. You're subject number two, after the tribble."

Jim laughs, and it strains his chest but it feels so _good_. Physically, he can tell it has been weeks since he last talked. His voice is hoarse and laughing feels foreign on his tongue, but it all feels fresh and new. He underwent the most intense regeneration to-date, and now it hits him that he is _alive_. He is not pressed up against the glass of an irradiated chamber as the last bit of fight drains from his body.

"Always got an ace up your sleeve, don't ya, Bones?"

Bone shakes his head, trying not to grin in return. It has been weeks since their kiss for Bones, and the way he's holding himself tells Jim he isn't even thinking about it. For Jim, it may as well have been thirty minutes since he felt the press of Bones' soft lips and the rough edge of his stubble. He can still recall how much Bones felt like home, and sitting in a hospital bed, he figures he needs a little bit of home.

"I guess I'm the most selfish bastard in the universe," Jim says. Bones stiffens, casting him an unreadable glance.

He may not feel as if time has passed, but the drugs are long out of his system. All his thoughts were and are still his own, and the lack of fatigue has made absolutely no difference in how much he wants to tug Bones close and kiss him until they both see stars that extend beyond the edges of the universe. He hopes Bones can tell.

"Against medical ethics, I brought you back to life because I couldn't bear the thought of you not being around to piss me off. I think that earns me at least second place, no?" he asks, finally revealing something.

He is saying that everything Jim saw in those glances, everything he heard in his tones, everything he felt in the way Bones' hands met his skin — everything is true. And right now, Jim doesn't care how Bones brought him back to life or how Khan survived the drop to earth or how Spock managed to catch him. Bones is and has always been within reach, and Jim did not die before he could make something of that. He feels the smile on his face grow larger, stretching his cheeks and making his jaw ache. It is the best kind of pain.

Bones allows him a small smile, before snapping back into doctor mode again. "Now tell me, do you feel any pain or discomfort?"

Jim nods earnestly. "I do, doc. In fact, I got a lil bit of an ache right here," he answers, reaching up to tap at his lips. "I don't suppose you know how to fix that?"

That earns him a laugh. "You're insufferable."

Jim licks his chapped lips and grins again. "Is that your diagnosis? Is there a cure, doctor?"

He doubts that it is medically advisable to swat a patient fresh out of a coma across the chest, but when Bones leans down to press a soft, deep kiss against his lips, Jim thinks he can forgive him.

**Author's Note:**

> (Note: the some of the lines from the final scene are drawn directly from the movie)


End file.
